Apocalypse Coronal Mass Ejection

Notes - Ava: LIkelihood: Events/time + history of coronal mass ejections: ● Oct. 18, 1841, a coronal mass ejection impacted telegraph lines and delayed a train because they couldn’t ascertain that the tracks were clear 3 ● May 1921, large geomagnetic storm caused interference with telegraphs and phone lines, aurora borealis visible in Boston 3 ● Sept. 18-19, 1941, large geomagnetic storm interfered with short-wave radio, aurora sightings across middle latitudes of the US, night rendered “bright as day” 3 ● May 1967, produced storm in the Earth’s magnetosphere and upper atmosphere, including the ionosphere, impacted radio surveillance and communications in North America, including the system responsible for detecting ballistic missiles in the polar region, sending warnings to the US, Canada, and Britain ○ “...the event easily have been misinterpreted as system radio jamming, potentially an act of war or an indication of an impending attack.” 3 ○ Could have lead to nuclear war, but didn’t b/c Air Forces had set up monitoring systems and were able to understand that the “jamming” wasn’t an attack ● 1859, the Carrington Event took 17.6 hours to reach Earth from the Sun 4 ○ Telegraph systems went wild ○ Auroras were visible in the tropics, rather than just the polar regions ○ “Sunspot activity rises and falls on an 11-year cycle, and we're currently approaching the next solar maximum in 2025. So now is a good time to look at the worst solar storms.” 4 ○ There were also reports of sparks falling from telegraph machines, operators receiving electric shocks, and small fires started by falling sparks ○ In the immediate aftermath of the Carrington Event, telegraph operators were unable to send or receive messages ○ Storms like the Carrington Event happen roughly every 500 years, ● We also know that a large solar storm 9200 years ago left radioactive particles that can today be found under the ice of Greenland, and a solar storm around the same intensity of the Carrington Event hit earth around 774 AD 4 ● Storms half as intense as the Carrington Event occur every 50 years 5 ● “The new work shows that what the scientists called “severe” space super-storms occurred 42 years out of the last 150 years. What they called “great” super-storms occurred in 6 years out of 150. The new work also sheds light on what’s called the Carrington event of 1859, the largest super-storm in recorded history.” 6 ● 4% chance of a severe solar storm every year, 0.7% chance of a Carrington class solar storm event per year 6 ● Flare occurred March 10, 1989, blackout March 13, caused short-wave radio interference 7 ● 1989 CME created electrical current under the ground of much of North America, caused a blackout in Canada 7 Sources: 1. Coronal Mass Ejections | NOAA / NWS Space Weather Prediction Center 2. What are coronal mass ejections? | Live Science 3. The Concerning History of Coronal Mass Ejections | RealClearScience 4. The Carrington Event: History's greatest solar storm | Space 5. What was the Carrington Event? | NOAA SciJinks – All About Weather 6. How likely is another Carrington Event? | Earth | EarthSky 7. The Day the Sun Brought Darkness | NASA

Notes - Isaac ● Largest CME ever recorded was solar storm of 1859 which knocked out new telephone lines and started fires