In September 1859, gold miners in the Rocky Mountains woke up in the middle of the night and began cooking breakfast, convinced the blinding lights in the sky meant it was morning. Meanwhile, telegraph operators across North America and Europe were suddenly receiving violent electric shocks from their equipment.
Pylons threw showers of sparks into the air, and machines continued transmitting messages even after being completely unplugged from their power sources. This was the Carrington Event, the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history, and it sent the entire planet into chaos.
The High-Speed Solar Flare
On September 1, 1859, English astronomers Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson independently observed a very bright solar flare. This flare triggered a coronal mass ejection that traveled directly toward Earth. It covered the 150 million kilometers (93 million miles) journey in just 17.6 hours.
This unusually high speed occurred because a previous solar emission had cleared the ambient solar wind plasma out of the way. When it collided with Earth’s magnetosphere, it generated an unprecedented geomagnetic storm.
Global Midnight Auroras
The resulting auroras illuminated night skies across the globe, reaching far beyond the polar regions. People witnessed these brilliant light displays in areas close to the equator, including Colombia, Cuba, and Hawaii.
In the northeastern United States, the glow was so intensely bright that people could comfortably read newspapers outdoors at midnight. In Australia, witnesses described the sky filling with streams of vibrant colors, bathing the landscape in an indescribable softness that rivaled the light of a full moon.
Unplugged and Electrified Telegraphs
The geomagnetically induced currents completely overwhelmed the technology of the era. Telegraph systems across Europe and North America failed, and operators reported sparks flying from their equipment.
However, some operators adapted to the bizarre conditions. In one recorded instance, telegraph operators communicating between Boston, Massachusetts, and Portland, Maine, completely disconnected their battery power sources. For roughly two hours, they successfully transmitted and received messages using solely the massive electrical current generated by the aurora overhead.
The Threat of a Modern Repeat
A geomagnetic storm of this magnitude occurring today would cause severe damage to the modern electrical power grid and orbiting satellites. Researchers estimate that a similar event would cost the United States alone between 600 billion and 2.6 trillion dollars.
The ensuing industrial disruptions could drastically reduce global agricultural yields by up to 48 percent. Tree ring data indicates that even larger solar storms hit Earth in the years 774 and 993, proving that massive space weather events have struck the planet multiple times throughout history.