On July 21, a geomagnetic storm is expected to occur. Despite its resounding name, it is not expected to have major effects beyond occasional failures in communications and of little magnitude, according to numerous international observatories. And it is that every time a solar flare is predicted, the fear that a evento Carrington resurfaces.
Image of the Sun taken by NASA during a solar storm
This phenomenon was named after Richard Carrington. This London fan of astronomy came every day to observe the Sun through his telescope. But on the morning of September 1, 1859, he realized that a solar flare was taking place on the star that sent out a huge amount of energetic particles equivalent to ten billion atomic bombs. Despite the magnitude of the event, its effects were not felt until the next day.
At that time, the telegraph was the consolidated and most used means of communication in the world, since the telephone was beginning to take its first steps as they say. And it was this device that was mainly affected by the solar storm.
Due to the dimension of the event that had taken place on the Sun, the telegraph lines collapsed throughout the world, even burning down on several occasions and damaging the operators. That day, the planet became practically incommunicado, since it was impossible to transmit messages over long distances, with all that this implies both in terms of infrastructure and economics.
[La enorme actividad del Sol provoca que los satélites caigan de sus órbitas]
It is also true that the telegraph was not an infallible system (and even less so considering the time) and could suffer failures for different reasons that have little to do with a coronal mass ejection.
But if there is something that marked September 2, 1859, beyond the collapse of communications, it was that the skies around the world changed color. When a geomagnetic storm occurs, the most visible consequence to the human eye is the northern lights.
A northern lights, photographed in Norway
“By interacting electrically charged solar particles with the Earth’s atmosphere. When a large amount of matter arrives due to the effect of a coronal mass ejection, the Earth’s magnetic field tries to deflect these particles, but finally they end up penetrating through the areas near the magnetic poles and come into contact with the upper layers of the atmosphere. In these layers, the particles interact with the gases of the atmosphere (oxygen, nitrogen) which will condition the color with which they will be seen«, as explained by the National Geographic Institute.
In this way, the firmament of countries like Colombia, Chile, Cuba or even Spain could well be those of Iceland, Greenland or Alaska. There are documents from 1859 that indicate that on the night of September 2, many people thought that it had been daytime due to the intensity of the auroras.
Given this background, could a Carrington event occur again today? Physicist Pete Riley, from the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in San Diego (USA), believes that this possibility could occur in the next 10 years with 12% probability. It is a very low percentage. Yes, but it exists. However, the effects could be very different from those that occurred in 1859, although with certain similarities.
Today, communication systems are more consolidated and perfected than in the 19th century, although it is true that humanity is more dependent than ever on satellite connections, which would be the first victims of a geomagnetic storm.
That is why a general collapse of communications systems could cause the collapse of a good part of society, which spends most of its time with a mobile phone, a tablet, a computer and, in general, all kinds of devices that need GPS connection the satellite.