We
have seen a couple of solar flares this year that gave us beautiful
auroras in areas that don't normally see such lights. But that was
nothing compared to the coronal mass ejection known as the Carrington
Super Flare in 1859.
That night there was scarcely a
square inch of earth that was not illuminated by aurora. As far south as
the Rocky Mountains the sky became so bright that birds began chirping
and campers awoke and began cooking breakfast. Blood-red auroral light
hovered over Cuba and Hawaii. The already-rattled telegraph operators at
the American Telegraph Company found their equipment sputtering
high-voltage nonsense messages most of the next morning, and some
offices reported injuries and property damage due to electrocutions and
fire.
If a solar flare of this magnitude were to
happen again, the good news is that we'd know about it ahead of time.
The bad news is that with modern electrical grids, the damage would be
much, much worse. However, the complete opposite, meaning a
lower
than usual number of sunspots, can cause dangerously cold weather, as
it did in 1709. Read about solar weather and its effects at
Damn Interesting.
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