Cybersecdn- In the late summer of 1859, the sky above Earth saw a strange cosmic event that, unknown to people at the time, was a sign of what we now call the “Internet Apocalypse.”
Astronomers like Richard Carrington were the first to notice this celestial event. It showed how random the sun’s power is and how it could change our technologically advanced world in ways we couldn’t have imagined before.
The Flash that Changed Everything
He was drawing the sunspots (ref) on September 1, 1859, when all of a sudden, a very bright flash of light blinded him. At first, he thought his equipment was broken, but he soon saw that the bright spots were still there.
A major coronal mass ejection (CME) is a huge burst of magnetized plasma from the sun’s atmosphere. This flash was the first time one had been seen.
Carrington had no idea that this huge wave of energy was rushing toward Earth at a speed that had never been seen before.
The Night the Sky Lit Up
It was only 17.5 hours after the CME when the plasma hit Earth, starting the worst geomagnetic storm ever seen. Auroras, which are usually only seen in the polar areas, were seen down to the Caribbean.
Gold workers woke up because they thought the auroras were dawn. After all, the sky over the Rocky Mountains was so bright. The lights were beautiful, but they had a darker effect: the storm messed up the electricity systems of the time, sparking telegraph poles and even killing people who were working them.
The Carrington Event
This event, which is now called the Carrington Event (ref), showed us how vulnerable we are to the sun’s whims.
It was thought that the energy that was released was the same as 10 billion megatons of TNT. It’s possible that an “internet apocalypse” would happen if something similar happened today because it would damage the underwater lines that carry a lot of the world’s internet traffic.
According to researchers from Lloyd’s of London and the U.S. Atmospheric and Environmental Research Agency, a Carrington-class event today would cause the U.S. alone between $0.6 trillion and $2.6 trillion in damage (ref).
Because we depend on technology more and more, the effects would be felt all over the world, messing up navigation, communication, and even basic services like power sharing.
As we get closer to the next solar maximum in 2025 (ref), it’s more important than ever to learn and get ready for these kinds of events.
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Understanding Solar Storms
To understand what might happen if something like Carrington happened again, we need to learn more about how solar storms work. On a large scale, these events show how Faraday’s law (ref) works by creating an electric field where the magnetic field is changing.
A solar storm’s charged plasma can change the Earth’s magnetic field, which can cause high voltages in electrical systems that could damage or kill electronics. The undersea lines that connect everyone to the internet are some of the most vulnerable parts of infrastructure (ref).
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A Solar Roulette
Studies show that the chance of something similar happening in the next ten years is between 0.46% and 1.88% (ref), which is a lot less likely than what was said before.
This estimate comes from a Weibull counting process (PDF), which is different from the usual assumption of a homogeneous Poisson process and gives us a more complete picture of how often solar storms happen.
Even though the chance seems low, the uncertain nature of the sun’s activity and recent “once in a lifetime” events show that we can’t be too relaxed.
As we get closer to a time of more solar activity, it is still very important to be alert and ready for a big solar storm.
The Carrington Event is a strong reminder of how weak our world is when compared to the forces of space. As technology gets better, we need to learn more about these kinds of solar events and be better prepared for them.
