The Carrington Event, also known as the Solar Storm of 1859, is the largest geomagnetic solar storm in recorded history, resulting from a coronal mass ejection; a massive surge of magnetized plasma originating from the Sun’s surface on the morning of September 1st, 1859. As the mass of plasma hit the Earth’s magnetosphere mere hours after the event had occurred on the Sun’s surface, southern aurorae were seen as far north as Queensland, Australia, and the aurora borealis was powerful enough that residents of the north-eastern US could read a newspaper by the aurora’s light. The solar storm ravaged the primitive telegraph communication system used in 1859, and caused damage to electrical grids worldwide.
CAUSES
The Carrington Event was caused by a massive burst of electromagnetic radiation, magnetized gas and plasma released into the solar wind by the Sun’s corona in a phenomenon called a coronal mass ejection (CME). The frequency of CMEs closely follow the eleven year solar cycle of sunspot activity, occurring more often and with greater intensity as the cycle nears solar maximum and sunspot activity increases. Sunspots are regions of the sun that appear visibly darker than their surroundings due to flux in the Sun’s magnetic field; the altered magnetic field inhibits convection on the surface and result in a reduced surface temperature.
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Recent scientific research presented at the 52nd annual meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Plasma Physics shows that CMEs (as well as solar flares and other solar phenomena) are closely related to magnetic reconnection, a process in which two oppositely directed and stressed magnetic field lines are brought together, changing their patterns of connectivity in respect to their source. The rearrangement accompanies a sudden release of energy previously stored in the stressed magnetic