This day in history August 28, 2019-Carrington Event
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Started by metmike - Aug. 29, 2019, 1:45 p.m.

Catching up a bit. Read about yesterdays history and pick out a great one!

There are some very noteworthy ones today!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_28


1845 – The first issue of Scientific American magazine is published.

I was getting that magazine for 25 years!


1859 – The Carrington event is the strongest geomagnetic storm on record to strike the Earth. Electrical telegraph service is widely disrupted.

1963March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom: The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his I Have a Dream speech.

*See the August 29, 2019 post on Civil Rights


1990   – An F5 tornado strikes the Illinois cities of Plainfield and Joliet, killing 29 people.

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By metmike - Aug. 29, 2019, 1:54 p.m.
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Solar storm of 1859

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

The solar storm of 1859 (also known as the Carrington Event)[1] was a powerful geomagnetic storm during solar cycle 10 (1855–1867). A solar coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth's magnetosphere and induced one of the largest geomagnetic storms on record, September 1–2, 1859. The associated "white light flare" in the solar photosphere was observed and recorded by British astronomers Richard C. Carrington (1826–1875) and Richard Hodgson (1804–1872).  The storm caused strong auroral displays and wrought havoc with telegraph systems. The now-standard unique IAU identifier for this flare is SOL1859-09-01.

A solar storm of this magnitude occurring today would cause widespread electrical disruptions, blackouts and damage due to extended outages of the electrical grid.[2][3] The solar storm of 2012 was of similar magnitude, but it passed Earth's orbit without striking the planet, missing by nine days.

On September 1–2, 1859, one of the largest recorded geomagnetic storms (as recorded by ground-based magnetometers) occurred. Auroras were seen around the world, those in the northern hemisphere as far south as the Caribbean; those over the Rocky Mountains in the U.S. were so bright that the glow woke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning.[7] People in the northeastern United States could read a newspaper by the aurora's light.[13] The aurora was visible from the poles to the low latitude area,[14] such as south-central Mexico,[15]Queensland, Cuba, Hawaii,[16] southern Japan and China,[17] and even at lower latitudes very close to the equator, such as in Colombia.[18] Estimates of the storm strength range from −800 nT to −1750 nT.[19]

Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving telegraph operators electric shocks.[20] Telegraph pylons threw sparks.[21] Some telegraph operators could continue to send and receive messages despite having disconnected their power supplies.[22]

By metmike - Aug. 29, 2019, 2:02 p.m.
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What Was The Carrington Event?


I’m talking about solar storms, of course, tremendous blasts of particles and radiation from the Sun which can interact with the Earth’s magnetosphere and overwhelm anything with a wire.




Aurora activity erupted across the entire planet. We’re not talking about those rare Northern Lights enjoyed by the Alaskans, Canadians and Northern Europeans in the audience. We’re talking about everyone, everywhere on Earth. Even in the tropics.

In fact, the brilliant auroras were so bright you could read a book to them.


The beautiful night time auroras was just one effect from the monster solar flare. The other impact was that telegraph lines and electrical grids were overwhelmed by the electricity pushed through their wires. Operators got electrical shocks from their telegraph machines, and the telegraph paper lit on fire.

What happened? The most powerful solar flare ever observed is what happened.

By metmike - Aug. 29, 2019, 2:04 p.m.
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The solar storm of 2012 that almost sent us back to a post-apocalyptic Stone Age

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186805-the-solar-storm-of-2012-that-almost-sent-us-back-to-a-post-apocalyptic-stone-age


                                       A solar flare captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, with Earth for scale                               

While you didn’t see it, feel it, or even read about it in the newspapers, Earth was almost knocked back to the Stone Age on July 23, 2012. It wasn’t some crazed dictator with his finger on the thermonuclear button or a giant asteroid that came close to wiping out civilization as we know it, though — no, what nearly ended us was a massive solar storm. Almost two years ago to the day, our most bounteous and fantastical celestial body — the Sun — kicked out one of the largest solar flares and coronal mass ejections ever recorded. And it missed Earth by a whisker. “If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces,” says Daniel Baker, who led the research into the massive storm.



The interdependency of different systems in the US. If the power fails, so does everything else.

Power systems that would be affected by a large geomagnetic storm in the US

By metmike - Aug. 29, 2019, 2:04 p.m.
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We had a near miss in 2012!

Solar storm of 2012


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_2012

The solar storm of 2012 was an unusually large and strong coronal mass ejection (CME) event that occurred on July 23 that year. It missed the Earth with a margin of approximately nine days, as the equator of the Sun rotates around its own axis with a period of about 25 days.[1] The region that produced the outburst was thus not pointed directly towards the Earth at that time. The strength of the eruption was comparable to the 1859 Carrington event that caused damage to electric equipment worldwide, which at that time consisted mostly of telegraph stations.[2]

The eruption tore through Earth's orbit, hitting the STEREO-A spacecraft. The spacecraft is a solar observatory equipped to measure such activity, and  because it was far away from the Earth and thus not exposed to the strong electrical currents that can be induced when a CME hits the Earth's magnetosphere,[2] it survived the encounter and provided researchers with valuable data.