According to the NOAA, a solar storm on the scale of the Carrington Event today could severely damage satellites, disable communications via telephone, radio and TV and cause electrical blackouts. It’s thought such an event could occur once every 500 years or so.

What impact did the Carrington event have on earth?

The 1859 Carrington Event caused the Northern Lights to light up night skies around the globe. Typically only seen near polar regions, the bright auroras were viewed all the way from the northern hemisphere to southern areas such as Cuba, Hawaii, and Columbia.

What would happen if we had a Carrington event today?

A Carrington-like event today could wreak havoc on power grids, satellites and wireless communication. In 1972, a solar flare knocked out long-distance telephone lines in Illinois, for example. In 1989, a flare blacked out most of Quebec province, cutting power to roughly 6 million people for up to nine hours.

Who are the members of sunsunstorm?

Sunstorm is an American AOR musical project, originally featuring lead vocalist Joe Lynn Turner (formerly of Rainbow), bassist/vocalist Dennis Ward, guitarist Uwe Reitenauer, drummer Chris Schmidt, (all members of the band Pink Cream 69) and keyboardist Jochen Weyer.

What if a solar superstorm had hit Earth in 2012?

The “impactor” was an extreme solar storm, the most powerful in as much as 150+ years. “If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces,” says Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado. A ScienceCast video recounts the near-miss of a solar superstorm in July 2012.

What was the solar flare on October 19 2014?

On Sunday, Oct. 19, 2014, the sun unleashed a powerful X1.1 solar flare from the sunspot AR 12192. Read the Full Story and See Video. On Oct. 2, the sun fired off an impressive M7.3-class solar flare that NASA captured in dazzling detail.

Why do researchers know so much about the July 2012 Storm?

The reason researchers know so much about the July 2012 storm is because, out of all the spacecraft in the solar system it could have hit, it did hit a solar observatory. STEREO-A is almost ideally equipped to measure the parameters of such an event.