July 1, 2025 at 3:48 pm

The Most Powerful Solar Storm Ever Recorded Would Devastate Modern Technology If It Happened Today

by Michael Levanduski

Illustration of solar storms

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Solar Storms are amazing events that take place all the time to one extent or another. Most of the time, the storms don’t have any significant impact here on Earth because they are either directed in a way that they don’t come in contact with the Earth’s magnetic field, or they are too weak to have any impact.

Sometimes, they will be strong enough to cause a beautiful light show in the sky, known as the Aurora Borealis. When the solar storms are especially powerful, they can actually damage electronic equipment, including satellites. Fortunately, most modern satellites are built with shielding to protect themselves from the damage, but they aren’t necessarily equipped to deal with an especially powerful solar storm.

Also, here on Earth, most electronic equipment is not made to survive a powerful solar storm. While powerful storms are relatively rare, new research shows that the most powerful storms can produce much more damage than previously thought.

The strongest solar storm on record occurred in 1959. It is called the Carrington Event, and a new study looked at what little data we have from that event and determined that it was actually quite a bit stronger than previously believed.

When the Carrington Event took place, technology on Earth was in its infancy. Telegraph machines were pretty much the cutting-edge tech at the time. That technology, however, experienced some major problems during the event, ranging from shocking the operators to catching fire.

Luckily enough, this event occurred just a couple of years after scientists began trying to record the influence solar storms had here on Earth. To that end, observatories in both Greenwich and Kew, UK, had magnetograms. These machines measure fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field. These fluctuations are primarily influenced by solar storms.

Depiction of solar storm on Earth

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The machines worked by shining light onto mirrors, which were secured to the ends of magnetized metal that were suspended over a photosensitive paper. When the magnetic field fluctuates, the light will sway back and forth, marking the paper. It looks similar to the Richter scale, which is widely known for measuring Earthquakes.

This machine was set up to measure the normal fluctuations, which are quite minor. The Carrington Event, however, caused the light to literally go off the chart. This means that it is not possible to get an exact measurement from the experiment. Fortunately, the paper was preserved, however, and researchers analyzed the lines that led up to it going off the photosensitive paper, and then where it returned.

From there, they could estimate just how powerful that solar event was. The strength of these storms is measured in a unit known as nanoteslas. Modern equipment has found that highly powerful solar storms generally produce between 350 and 400 nanoteslas, and those are considered ‘once in a century events.’

Solar Storm on the Sun

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The study found that the Carrington event was at least 500 nanoteslas at a minimum, and likely more. If this type of event happened today, it would cause widespread damage to any technological equipment that was not properly protected. While critical equipment is built to withstand strong solar storms, if another Carrington event happened today, the impact would be massive and widespread.

To put it simply, the world is not prepared for another Carrington event. Hopefully the sun remains calm until our tech advances to the point where solar storms won’t cause problems.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a second giant hole has opened up on the sun’s surface. Here’s what it means.