A pair of strong solar storms that hit Earth late last week were squalls compared to the torrent of electrons that rained down in the "perfect space storm" of 1859. And sooner or later, experts warn, the Sun will again conspire to send earthlings a truly destructive bout of space weather.

If it happens anytime soon, we won’t know exactly what to expect until it’s over, and by then some modern communication systems could be like beachfront houses after a hurricane.

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In early September in 1859, telegraph wires suddenly shorted out in the United States and Europe, igniting widespread fires. Colorful aurora, normally visible only in polar regions, were seen as far south as Rome and Hawaii.

The event 144 years ago was three times more powerful than the strongest space storm in modern memory, one that cut power to an entire Canadian province in 1989. A new account of the 1859 event, from research led by Bruce Tsurutani of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, details the most powerful onslaught of solar energy in recorded history.

Solar conspiracy

Space storms are created when the Sun erupts, sending charged particles racing outward, an expanding bubble of hot gas called plasma.

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In 1859, four crucial events conspired at one moment, Tsurutani told SPACE.com.

"The plasma blob that was ejected from the Sun hit the Earth," he said. That’s a relatively routine event. What preceded the strike was more unusual. "The blob came at exceptionally high speeds. It took only 17 hours and 40 minutes to go from the Sun to Earth." Solar storms typically take two to four days to traverse the 93 million miles (150 million kilometers).

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"The magnetic fields in the blob, called a coronal mass ejection, were exceptionally intense," Tsurutani said. "And the fourth, most important, ingredient was that the magnetic fields of the blob were opposite in direction from the Earth’s fields."

Earth’s magnetic field normally protects the surface of the planet from a continual flow of charged particles, called the solar wind, and even does a pretty good job defending against some storms. When a storm swept past Earth last Friday, it met up with magnetic field pointed in such a way that it thwarted the storm’s effects. That’s not always the case.

In 1859, the planet’s defenses were overwhelmed.

That was then

Society back then did not notice the storm the way it would today. The telegraph was 15 years old. There were no satellite TV feeds, no automated teller machines relying on orbiting relay stations, and no power grids.

Tsurutani said scientists can’t yet accurately measure or predict what the strength or direction of Earth’s magnetic field will be when a storm arrives. The storms themselves can be predicted. And Tsurutani says there will eventually be another one like 1859.

"It could very well be even more intense than what transpired in 1859," he says. "As for when, we simply do not know."

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March 17, 2010

The Best of Robert Roy Britt

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