[♪ INTRO]
Every now and then, you’ll hear a story
on the news about a new solar storm.
They happen all the time, but they’re usually
not intense enough to affect Earth beyond
some neat light shows around the poles.
But sometimes, they can be really powerful,
and they have the potential
to wreak all kinds of havoc.
In 1859, Earth experienced the biggest solar
storm ever recorded.
Back then, it didn’t cause much damage,
but if we ever get hit
by another storm like it…
we’re kinda toast.
Solar storms are just outbursts or explosions
caused by magnetic activity on the Sun.
Sometimes, as part of one, the Sun will release
coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, which are
giant waves of magnetism and the hot, electrically-charged
gas called plasma.
If a CME hits Earth, it interacts with our
magnetic field
and causes disturbances
called geomagnetic storms.
These storms can create beautiful things like
the Northern and Southern Lights,
but they can also cause all kinds of trouble.
The solar storm in 1859 was big enough to
send two CMEs right at us.
We don’t know exactly how strong it was
because we didn’t have satellites to measure
it, but research suggests it was the most
powerful storm in the last 500 years.
When the first CME reached Earth, the Northern
Lights were seen as far south as Colombia,
and the Southern Lights were seen as far north
as Queensland.
In some places, it was even bright enough
to read in the middle of the night.
But the new-fangled telegraph industry also
experienced all kinds of electrical failures.
Machines sent and received false signals,
and even threw sparks that,
in some cases, started fires.
Other technology, mostly scientific instruments,
went similarly haywire.
At the time, no one knew what was happening,
but this became some of the first evidence
that auroras are caused by electromagnetism.
Right after these events, two ameteur astronomers
named Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson
independently saw a big, white flare on the
surface of the Sun,
which turned out to be the second CME!
But except for a few broken telegraph machines,
everyone survived the solar storm,
and it’s now called the Carrington Event.
It could have been called the Richards Event,
but sometimes life lets you down.
Now, these days, we rely on technology way
more than we did in 1859.
And if a solar storm of the same magnitude
as the Carrington Event hit us…
it’d be rough.
We’ve put a lot of stuff into space, and
we rely on it really heavily.
GPS, cell phones, wireless credit card transactions
(like when you pay at the pump for gas),
they’re all satellite-based technologies.
And solar storms are especially dangerous
to satellites.
Energetic particles from CMEs can damage their
solar panels, mostly by short-circuiting them.
And static charges can build up
on the satellites’ bodies,
which can cause more
short-circuiting or false signals.
And even worse, a powerful geomagnetic storm
could even cause satellites to fall out of orbit.
The upper atmosphere is filled
with charged particles,
which can be affected by geomagnetic storms.
A bunch of things can happen, but they basically
add up to a ton of built-up energy,
which means a lot of heat.
And hot gases expand.
Satellites just outside the atmosphere would
suddenly be enveloped in a hot, cushy cloud,
which would create drag that would slow them
down.
And if they got slow enough, they’d fall
to Earth.
Fortunately, satellite engineers are aware
of all of this.
And while they’re not able to fully compensate
for the damage from an angry Sun, they are
working on developing more resilient satellites.
But the impacts of an enormous storm wouldn’t
be limited to miles above the ground!
We’d be in trouble down here, too.
Besides the fact that our cell phones would
stop working,
we’d also be sitting in the dark.
See, those giant boxes you see along power
lines are transformers, and they convert electricity
running through power lines into something
your house can use.
Unfortunately, geomagnetic storms can cause
induced currents in them,
which can overload them and make them explode.
This is actually the same idea behind what
made telegraph machinery spark in the 1800s.
It’s estimated that if we had a Carrington
Event today,
most of the United States would go dark.
And it would take years to replace the transformers
and repair that kind of damage.
Our power grids just aren’t prepared for
a giant solar storm, but at least we’re
getting better at predicting the Sun’s activity,
thanks to organizations like NASA and NOAA.
Now, if we knew an especially nasty solar
storm was on the way, we could at least shut
down transformers so they don’t short-circuit.
Then, we’d have only a week or so of Mad-Max-style
pandemonium instead of years.
So, we’d be in trouble if the Sun decides
to throw a temper tantrum,
but it could always be worse!
Other stars like the Sun can produce massive
explosions, called superflares.
And they have energies between 10 and 1000
times that of a Carrington Event.
And that would probably cause total chaos.
But thankfully, recent papers suggest that
the Sun probably isn’t capable of producing
a superflare, because its upper atmosphere
isn’t energetic enough.
So if we ever experience a colossal solar
storm… just remember:
it could have been way worse!
Thanks for watching this episode of 
SciShow Space!
If you’d like to learn even more
about solar flares and solar storms,
you can watch one of the
latest space news episodes,
where we talked about the
strongest solar flare in over a decade.
[♪ OUTRO]
