Powerful Solar Storm Happened Once, See What It Caused

Have you ever heard of Carrington Event? It was the worst solar storm ever recorded. On September 2, 1859, people all over Europe and North America woke up at night, confused and still tired. But when they looked out of their windows, they discovered it wasn’t sunlight. Auroras appeared even in the regions where they had never been witnessed before, like Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Hawaii.

The most high-tech stuff of that time, telegraph wires, shorted out throughout Europe and the US. Sparks were flying from equipment, and many human operators got electric shocks. Papers in telegraph offices burst into flames. All the machines were immediately disconnected from their batteries. Fires, ignited by short-circuits, spread over large areas. Earth’s inhabitants had never seen or experienced anything like that before. At that time, very few people knew that the Sun was to blame for this chaos… So, let’s figure out what a solar storm can do to Earth and how dangerous a geomagnetic storm.

#brightside

TIMESTAMPS:
Carrington Event (the solar storm of 1859) 0:01
March 1989 geomagnetic storm 2:39
Solar storm of 2012 4:14
What a solar storm is 5:08
What if a powerful solar storm happened nowadays 6:38
Superflares 9:33