Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Carrington Event

Episode Date: September 5, 2021

On September 1 and 2 of 1859, people all over the world were treated to something quite rare. Auroras were seen in the skies as far south as the Caribbean and as far north as Brisbane, Australia. However, some astronomers and telegraph operators experienced something different. If this same event were to happen today, it might bring out society to its knees. Learn more about the Carrington Event and what it means for our modern world, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On September 1st and 2nd of 1859, people all over the world were treated to something quite rare. Aurora's were seen in the skies as far south as the Caribbean and as far north as Brisbane, Australia. However, some astronomers and telegraph operators experienced something totally different. And if this same event were to happen today, it might bring society to its knees. Learn more about the Carrington event and what it means for our modern world on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep, only to have your mind start? racing the moment your head hits the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a

gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. This episode is sponsored by CuriosityStream. If you're interested in the workings of the sun,

then CuriosityStream has plenty of content for you. They have shows like Our Violent Sun, Eclipse, Science and Aw, and Touching the Sun about NASA's Park solar probe. And that's just scratching the surface of the over 2,000 videos and documentaries you can find on almost any subject that you're interested in. You can get an entire year of CuriosityStream for less than $20. It's so cheap that you almost can't afford to not get it. I'm a paying customer, and I regularly watch CuriosityStream to get ideas for episodes. If you are even remotely curious about the world you live in, go to everything-everywhere.com slash curiosity stream to start your subscription. Once again, that's everything-everywhere.com

slash curiosity stream. The events of September 1st and 2nd, 1859, began with two amateur British astronomers, Richard Carrington and Richard Hodson. On the morning of September 1st, they were making observations of the sun. Solar astronomy was always a difficult thing to do at best, because her eyes can't handle looking directly at it, and looking at it through a telescope would only make things worse. They were both working independently of each other when they observed something that up until that point, no human had ever seen before. Each astronomer later recorded their observations and had them published side by side in the monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society that November. Carrington described what he saw as, quote, two patches of intensely bright white light,

unquote. The two astronomers saw the first recorded solar flare in human history. Sunspots had been seen long before, and for very brief periods during a total solar eclipse, people saw the corona of the sun, but no one had ever been able to see a solar flare before. What drove them to look at the sun was strange activity going on the days before their observation, starting on August 29th. Unusual Aurora activity was taking place with auroras being seen much closer to the equator than usual. About 18 hours after their observation, the earth was hit by a massive geomagnetic storm. At the time, no one had any clue what that was or what was happening. What they did know is that things started behaving very weirdly. What most people noticed were the auroras. The few previous days had

strong aurora activity, but it was nothing like what happened that night. Aurora's were seen in Jamaica, Cuba, and Hawaii. Over the Rocky Mountains, it was so bright that it woke up miners who thought that it was dawn. Birds woke up and started chirping at 1 a.m. The sky became a deep red in some places, leading some people to think that it was the end of the world, voting the Bible passage about the sea turning to blood. Some communities thought that nearby towns were on fire because of the color of the sky. People in Boston claimed that they were able to read the newspaper in the middle of the night from the light of the auroras. The next day's Baltimore American and Commercial Advisor newspaper reported, quote, those who happened to be out late on Thursday night

had the opportunity of witnessing another magnificent display of the auroral lights. The phenomenon was very similar to the display on Sunday night, though at times the light was, if possible, more brilliant, and the prismatic hues more varied and glorious. The light appeared to cover the whole for a moment, apparently like a luminous cloud, through which the stars of the larger magnitude indistinctly shone. The light was greater than that of the moon at its full, but had an indescribable softness and delicacy that seemed to envelop everything upon which it rested. Unquote. There were a few people on Earth in 1859 who had the ability to detect some something beyond just the auroras, however. In London's Q Observatory, they had an early magnetometer

setup, which measured magnetic fields. They had observed a large magnetic disturbance on August 28th, and another on September 2nd. Moreover, after the event took place, they were able to compare notes, and realized it took place only hours after the solar flare observed by Carrington. Balfour Stewart, the head of the observatory, noted in his report, quote, On calling at the Q Observatory a day or two afterwards, Mr. Carrington learned that at the very moment when he had observed this phenomena, the three magnetic elements at Q were simultaneously disturbed. If no connection had been known to subsist between these two classes of phenomena, it would perhaps be wrong to consider this in any other light than a casual coincidence. But since General Sabine has proven that a relation subsists between magnetic disturbances and sunspots, it is not impossible to suppose that in this case our luminary was taken. in the act. End quote. The people who really noticed that something was going on were telegraph operators.

All over North America and Europe, telegraph systems went dead. And it was only in North America in Europe because they were the only places with telegraphs in 1859. Not only didn't they work, but there were huge electrical currents going through the wires. Some operators were injured. In Washington, D.C., telegraph operator Frederick Royce had an electrical arc go from his equipment to his forehead. Some stations had their chemically treated telegraph paper burst into flame. Sparks were reported shooting out from equipment everywhere. In Boston, they found they could actually send a signal to Portland, Maine, without the battery hooked up because there was so much current in the wires. And that was something that wasn't supposed to happen. Eventually, over the next

day, things returned to normal. While scientists quickly began to piece together what had happened, it would be decades before they really knew the cause of the events in 1859. We now know that what happened was that the Earth was hit with a massive coronal mass injection. They aren't the same thing as solar flares, but they're usually associated with them. What astronomers think is happening is that the magnetic fields on the sun become really twisted up. As they become more twisted, it eventually violently breaks, ejecting an enormous amount of plasma matter into space. This matter is all in the form of subatomic particles.

If the ejection hits the Earth magnetic field, it causes what is known as a geomagnetic storm. The results include spectacular auroras in the sky, and it wreaks absolute havoc on electronics. If you remember from science class, if you move a wire in a magnetic field, you produce an electrical current. Or you can get the same effect by moving a magnetic field around a static wire, which is exactly what happened to the telegraph cables in 8. 1859. The geomagnetic storm of 1859 wasn't the only time that this has happened in recent history, although it was the biggest. Other smaller events occurred in November of 1882 and May of 1921. In 1967, a solar event knocked out polar surveillance radars which caused the military to scramble and prepare for a nuclear attack. In 1972, the U.S. Navy had magnetic mines off the coast of

Vietnam detonate due to a geomagnetic storm. In March of 1989, in what was perhaps the largest geomagnetic storm since the Carrington event, the entire province of Quebec had a power failure for nine hours. A Carrington level event actually occurred in 2012, but it missed the earth by about nine days. As it stands, another Carrington type event has the potential to totally cripple the modern world. In 1859, the only wires we had were telegraph wires. Today, we have wires everywhere for computers and electricity. It would be a giant worldwide power surge that could take down most satellites, electrical grids, and communication networks. On the electrical grid, it could blow at transformers

almost everywhere, and it would take years to build back the grid after something this massive. This isn't something like a meteor hitting Earth, where we have plenty of advance notice and we can send up a rocket with Bruce Willis to blow it up. There is nothing you can do to stop a coronal mass ejection. So what can we do about it? The good good. The good news is that there's usually some lead time between when a large solar flare is observed and when the particles hit Earth. You usually have about three to five days, because the particles don't travel at the speed of light.

However, with the Carrington event, it only took 18 hours. With that lead time, it would give the institutions running power grids and communication networks time to put a plan of action into place. This is, of course, assuming that they have a plan, which most don't at this point. It would involve voluntarily shutting down the grid and the networks so the power surge doesn't blow out transformers and control stations. That means everyone would be in the dark for maybe a few days to avoid being in the dark for months or years. There are some parts of our infrastructure right now that really have no protection whatsoever. Undersea fiber optic cables don't have to worry about a power surge, but the repeaters which are spaced out of a few kilometers are very vulnerable.

Likewise, almost everything in orbit would be at risk of failure, including the entire GPS system. Most small electronics and small networks probably won't be in much danger, but you'd still probably want to unplug everything from wall outlets. And if you remember back to my episode on microwave ovens, the inside of a microwave is a Faraday cage. A 2013 study taken after the 2012 coronal mass injection that just missed the earth estimated that the damage in just the United States alone would be in the trillions of of dollars. Estimates based on ice core samples from Greenland indicate that a Carrington-level

event hits the Earth about once every 500 years. However, up until now, geomagnetic storms really didn't matter, because without electronics, the only effect was stunning auroras. Another Carrington-type event will hit the Earth. It's a matter of when it will happen and how big it will be, not a matter of if it will happen. It could happen this year, or it could happen centuries from now. Whenever it happens, however, the aftermath of the geomagnetic storm will depend on what we do now to prepare for that eventual day. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson. Today's review comes from listener L.D. Martin, 1959, at Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, entertaining and informative. Those old enough to remember

Paul Harvey's the rest of the story will find this show familiar, as it as much of the same approach as that classic show. Highly recommended. Thank you very much, L.D. Martin. That's quite a compliment. If I could get this show to even 1% of what Paul Harvey did, I'd consider it a success. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a question, you too can have it read on the show. Now you know the rest of the story.