The Carrington event saw telegraph offices and equipment catching fire spontaneously and operators getting electric shocks. A geomagnetic storm of such intensity can cause an apocalypse on Earth.

The Carrington event was the strongest geomagnetic storm recorded to have ever hit Earth. Such a storm can wreak havoc on Earth today. (Image: NASA)

The Sun has been volatile for months now and things are getting even more fiery for Earth. As the Sun heads toward the peak of its 11-year solar cycle, it is getting more and more volatile and the eruptions and explosions on it are set to get worse till it reaches the solar maximum. When that will happen is not clear as yet to anyone. The peak of the activity is likely to be reached between 2025 and 2026. What humanity has to fear from this ramping up of activity by the Sun is another solar storm that can generate a Carrington event type geomagnetic storm when it hits Earth’s magnetic field.

Notably, when the Carrignton event happened in 1859, it virtually destroyed all forms of electrical communications on Earth. In the US, at that time, there were documented evidence of telegraph operators getting electric shocks through their machines, sheets of paper looked to have spontaneously caught fire there, and some even said that they were able to actually operate the telegraph system without any connection to any battery or electrical source. The carnage was absolute. However, those were the early days of technology on Earth.

Today is the digital age and technology is in every aspect of our lives from power grids, Internet, transportation, oil rigs, satellites, mobile phones, hospitals and much of everything else that humanity does is through technology. If a Carrington level geomagnetic storm happens, it threatens to cause mass power outages and blackouts, and casualties on Earth and send humanity back to the dark ages. The Carrington event would likely have been rated G5, the strongest such rating possible. It was the strongest geomagnetic storm recorded in human history.

One thing to be noted is that the geomagnetic storm will not directly cause any harm. That is because Earth’s magnetic field will absorb almost all of the energy that the Sun had blasted at it. The danger for humanity is indirect – total loss of technology. 

The re-building of infra that would have been virtually destroyed will take months if not years to bring back to any semblance of normalcy. According to a study by researcher Jyothi Sangeetha Abdu, if the Internet-carrying deep sea cables are knocked out, getting them back online may even take 6 months.