Short Wave - When Our Star Erupts - The 1859 Solar Storm And More

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

In 1859, astronomer Richard Carrington was studying the Sun when he witnessed the most intense geomagnetic storm recorded in history. The storm, triggered by a giant solar flare, sent brilliant auroral displays across the globe causing electrical sparking and fires in telegraph stations.Short Wave's scientist-in-residence Regina G. Barber talks to solar physicist Dr. Samaiyah Farid about what's now known as the Carrington event and about what may happen the next time a massive solar storm hits Earth. You can check out NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory for pictures of our Sun in real-time: go.nasa.gov/3LOWV1uCurious about other parts of our solar system? Email the show at [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. In 1859, an English scientist named Richard Carrington spent much of his time watching the sun's activity. And in September of that year, he noticed something next to a large sunspot, one of those dark areas on the sun's surface. He saw a really big flash, and he wasn't sure what happened. Dr. Samaya Farid is a solar physicist at Yale University. He thought there was some kind of an...

accident with the instrument or something like that. Less than a day later, on the other side of the world, a group of gold miners in the Rockies woke up to what they thought was the sunrise. Come out the tents and people have started, you know, going about the date and they realize, wait, the sun is not rising. This is actually just an aurora. They were seeing the Aurora Borealis, the northern lights. This aurora was so huge, it was witnessed in places where it's rarely seen, like Cuba.

This event even caused strong southern lights in places like Chile and Columbia. And it was doing weird things to the technology of the era. Telegraph machines sparked, shocking operators, catching the telegraph paper on fire, and some of the machines stopped working completely. And in one case, an unplugged telegraph machine continued operating, powered by a rogue current in the atmosphere. What Richard Carrington observed that day taught us a lot about the sun and space weather. People knew about the roar, but they didn't know it was related to his sun.

So he was the first person to kind of correlate the two. Today on the show, we're going to learn about what's happening on the surface of our nearest star, the sun, and what may happen the next time a massive solar storm, like the one in 1859, hits Earth. I'm Regina Barber. You're listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science Suncast from NPR. A geomagnetic storm happens when the Earth's magnetic field fluctuates. It changes. It can be generated from the sun's activity. But to understand this huge 1859 solar storm called the Carrington event, we need to understand two other things. First, solar flares. Solar flares are caused by a sudden release of high-energy photons,

which are particles of light and other high-energy particles from the sun's atmosphere. That's kind of the largest type of eruptive event on the sun. Solar flares release an explosion of mostly electromagnetic radiation. Some of them are white light flares. The photons that white light flares release are in the sun. visible portion of the electromagnetic or light spectrum. But sometimes these eruptions also send matter toward Earth. It releases sometimes a CME, which is a coronal mass ejection.

These coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, blast hot plasma, superheated gas from the sun into space at more than a million miles per hour. So the flare's like the bomb going off. And then the CME is like the rocks and the particles and the way. Like a chunk of the sun coming at us. Right, exactly. So, yeah, sometimes you can have a flare without a CME, and sometimes you can have a CME without a flare, but they're very also highly correlated to each other. So a lot of times we have a flare, you also have a CME.

Okay, so solar flares are large explosions of electromagnetic radiation from the sun's atmosphere. And you're saying they're sometimes accompanied by these coronal mass injections or these CMEs, which are huge plasma eruptions from the sun. Okay, so can you tell our listeners how do these auroras even happen? How do northern lights happen? So a lot of people think that the particles that are causing the aurora are coming from the sun. And they do kind of indirectly. But really, we have the earth in a magnetic field. And there's already particles inside of that magnetic field, the earth is just sitting there.

And so when those particles and radiation come from the sun in the CME, it interacts with Earth's magnetic field, causes it to push around all its particles. and then push those particles down inside of the Earth's atmosphere. And that's what you see as the aurora. Right. You're seeing these particles colliding with the hydrogen and nitrogen in the atmosphere. So what do we think happened in the 1859 solar storm, the Carrington event? Did we see a flare and a CME? Yep.

So we had a CME that happened before the Carrington event. That one didn't have as much impact on Earth. People did notice some aurora. And then the flare, white-light flare, which means that it was observed in white-like flare. light. And then the CME that followed that one is what caused a lot of the disruption on Earth. And not only are we having charged particles coming into our magnetic field, but we're also having a changing magnetic field. And when you have a changing magnetic field, you induce electricity. So that's another reason why those telegraph wires in 1859 got all messed up. Yeah, exactly. It's overload of electricity generated just from those moving magnetic fields moving quickly and generating electricity, which is nuts.

It is, right? Okay. So, but brings us to, like, because you have Earth's magnetic field changing, your energy grids are getting, like, busted. So, like, what would happen if we had a storm like that now? Yeah, it's estimated that that kind of event right now will be catastrophic across the globe. That means no internet, no phone, no TV, no power. And not just that, even, like, the water cleaning systems and health systems, All of those things could be potentially wiped out. Anything with an electrical circuit could be potentially destroyed. You know, some people have estimated it would take us years to recover, 10 years to recover from one storm like that. So has anything come close to a Carrington event in recent years? We have, but did not impact the Earth.

But we have seen white light flares that were the size of the Carrington event. You know, it would have been very impactful. if they had been directly aimed at Earth. These huge events, how often do they happen? Well, so the sun goes through a solar cycle and that happens every 11 years when we go from having a lot of flares at solar maximum to not that many flares and solar minimum. Where are we now?

Right now, we're climbing towards another solar maximum. So we engine back up towards that way. But that large carrington event type storm, a lot of people think only happen, you know, once every 10 years, at least to a hundred, hundred years. It depends on which estimation. And the Carrington event happened way back in 1859, so we're overdue. Past due 401, definitely, by any estimation. Makes me think of like the big earthquake in Seattle. They're like any day now. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like any day, any day. Any day.

But so what are we doing then? Like, what are we doing to prepare if these events are coming? Yeah. So I know that there's a council that has been set up that is a collaboration between all the agencies like National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Science Foundation, and then NASA, and Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security. So I believe that organization is called Swarm, Space Weather Operations, Research, and Mitigation. And so what it does is develop a strategy and a plan to implement how to prevent having such a catastrophic effect on the electrical system and then what to do after that kind of event. So let's say there's even smaller storms, you know, like how much time do we have?

What would that warning be like? Yeah, so if we have a big, large flare, it's pretty much immediate. Eight minutes is how much time it takes energy to travel from the sun to the earth, which is dangerous because, you know, astronauts and the commercial private space industry is booming now. Also, high altitude flights would be really effective because you could get extra radiation exposure. So that's almost immediate. That's eight minutes.

We don't have very much warning at all. But for the CMEs, for the particles that are coming with the CME, we have about two or three days morning. Okay. These coronal mass ejections, they're composed of matter, right? So they're moving super fast, but they're not traveling at the speed of light. So we have more time than a flare. That sounds better. something better, you know.

And we do have now, we have observatories that observe the sun 24-7. The solar dynamics observatory is one of them. And it takes images of the sun every 12 seconds of the whole corona. And so if a flare goes off then or if we see even a

configuration that might cause a flare, they often will put out a flare alert. What do the astronauts do? What do satellites do? What do they do to prepare? Yeah. So they have a safety plan. So for instance, the astronauts have a room on board the International Space Station that have denser walls to protect them from radiation. So they would all go into those rooms.

And for satellites that are orbiting Earth, the plan is for them to turn their electronics away from the sun so that they can miss the highest energy particles. So they do have a contingency plan, you know, for these type of things, but it's hard to exactly to predict. But they do have a plan. So the radiation from solar flares can cause problems high in the atmosphere. And we know that here on Earth that CMEs can destroy our energy grids. Have you thought about what you'd do if that were to happen? Like, have you prepared? I haven't.

I don't have like a bomb shelter or anything like that, you know, prepared. Because I'm originally from Alabama. And I grew up in the country. So I feel like if I just had to walk to Alabama or go back to some person in the rules, area and kill a rabbit and eat it. I could do that. I'll be fine. Okay, we're going from a dark topic, a very apocalyptic scenario, but let's come back to the light, literally, because I love solar physics. How would you suggest everyday people observe all this amazing activity on our sun? Yeah. You don't have to do a lot to be able to observe the sun. But one thing you have to

keep in mind is that you have to protect your eyes. So you can go out in any sunny day and build something called a solar viewer, which will kind of project the shadow of the sun onto a piece of paper. And that's this similar setup to what Karen can use to observe the sunspots. You can do that right now every day. And that's also how you can observe the solar eclipse, which I have yet to do. But I'm excited because there's one coming up soon in spring 2024. Like you said, in two years, it's going to go across the United States. I would encourage you to drive to the closest point of totality that you possibly find and it just experience.

it because when you do, you realize you actually on like a planet flying through the universe. It's so easy to forget that we're just on a rock flying through the universe. But when you see something blocking the sun and you see like the corona and it feels so huge and magnificent and we feel so small and it's just, it's amazing. That's what I love the most. Just watching the sheer beauty of science taking place in front of the eyes. And until then, you'll find me on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory website, downloading movies and images of the sun in real time. It's so cool. Solar physicist, semi-fraid, thank you so much.

Thank you so much for talking to me about everything solar. I loved it. Thank you. I love it, too. It's awesome. The producer of this episode was Eva Tesfai. Stephanie O'Neill was the editor, and Margaret Serino checked the facts. The audio engineer for this episode was Patrick Murray. Giselle Grayson is our senior supervising editor. Neil Carruth is our senior director of On Demand News Programming. And Anya Grunman is our senior vice president of programming. I'm Regina Barber.

Thanks for listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science Podcast from NPR.