Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Shout out to our super producer,
Speaker 1: Casey Pagram. Shout out to our super producer, the one
Speaker 1: and only Max Williams, and no shout out to you man.
Speaker 1: It's we We both had some weird weekends. Who are
Speaker 1: Do you know what that is? Is that a thing
Speaker 1: that this is like a military thing? Or is that
Speaker 1: something that al Pacino says an scent of a woman.
Speaker 1: I've always associated it with the military, but that may
Speaker 1: be due to my upbring, got it. I don't know
Speaker 1: why I said that just now. It's just for some reason.
Speaker 1: Every time I'm on a show and someone else does
Speaker 1: the insure, I just always feel compelled to chime in
Speaker 1: with hua and I never do it. But I decided
Speaker 1: to do it today. Decided to indulge myself this time.
Speaker 1: I'm noll. By the way, we're not talking about the
Speaker 1: military today. Well, I mean it might enters in. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about military communications and that kind of technology,
Speaker 1: but we're talking about natural phenomena, something kind of in
Speaker 1: the realm of things. We might discuss on another show
Speaker 1: we do stuff they don't want you to know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you were to ask me, hey, Ben Bolan,
Speaker 1: since I haven't introduced myself yet, what's the deal with
Speaker 1: the sun? Well, I would say it depends upon your perspective.
Speaker 1: The Sun is both the giver of life to everything,
Speaker 1: from us doing the show you're listening today and the
Speaker 1: dog who is apparently a big fan of ours barking
Speaker 1: in the background. But the Sun is also a source
Speaker 1: of great potential danger. We know that at some point
Speaker 1: the Sun will consume this planet, but it's a it's
Speaker 1: a long way away, hopefully. The problem is that the
Speaker 1: Sun is not content like some lovecrafty and monster to
Speaker 1: just slumber away until the end of days. No, the
Speaker 1: Sun is alive in its own way. It's very active
Speaker 1: and as you said, Nol on our other shows, stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. We've talked at length
Speaker 1: about some of the perhaps unexpected dangers that the Sun
Speaker 1: can pose, everything from you know, some as small as
Speaker 1: sun burned to a CME or coronal mass ejection. And
Speaker 1: today's episode is about uh coronal mass ejection, a disaster
Speaker 1: from the sun. It's something we know today as the
Speaker 1: Carrington event of eighteen fifty nine. No, you want to
Speaker 1: set the stage four, man, I sure do. Ben. So,
Speaker 1: in the morning the wee hours of September one, eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine, a gentleman by the name of Richard Harrington,
Speaker 1: who you could describe as sort of a hobbyist, an
Speaker 1: astronomer hobbyist. He noticed and observed and sketched a kind
Speaker 1: of bizarre looking cluster of sun spots. It was an
Speaker 1: area in the sky that basically erupted and created this
Speaker 1: bright flash that generated a ton of energy that you know,
Speaker 1: came from the Sun, and it creates this magnetic field
Speaker 1: that is then released and shot billions of tons of
Speaker 1: sun material, star stuff, I don't know, whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call it, towards the Earth. Essentially, he looks at
Speaker 1: all of this and what that is that that he
Speaker 1: were describing and that he was seeing and describing and
Speaker 1: his sketches was a solar flare. And then following that
Speaker 1: solar flare, you get what you described, Ben, something called
Speaker 1: a coronal mass ejection that actually hit the Earth a
Speaker 1: mere seventeen hours later and created essentially what you would
Speaker 1: call a geo magnetic storm of such intensity that it
Speaker 1: would be felt across the entire planet in multiple ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. And when we say star stuff here, we're
Speaker 1: not too far off. We're taking only a tiny bit
Speaker 1: of stylistic license. See. I mean, your coronal mass ejection
Speaker 1: can eject billions of tons of what is technically known
Speaker 1: as coronal material and carry along with it an embedded
Speaker 1: magnetic field. This is where things get pretty dicey. Later
Speaker 1: that night, after Carrington has witnessed this, telegraph communications across
Speaker 1: the planet start to fail. They stutter out, and then
Speaker 1: they go dark, and people started reporting again all across
Speaker 1: the world. Sparks flying from telegraph machines. Operators were getting
Speaker 1: electric shocks, papers were setting on fire, and these auroras,
Speaker 1: colorful auroras, illuminated the nighttime sky. It looked beautiful, but
Speaker 1: they were incredibly bright. Birds thought it was daytime. The
Speaker 1: day birds began their morning chirping. People who went to
Speaker 1: work in the morning started their daily chores because they
Speaker 1: thought the sun had come up. It's the opposite of
Speaker 1: our earlier episode when people thought the day had ended.
Speaker 1: If you'll you'll remember that one, right, which was probably
Speaker 1: a volcanic explosion. Oh no, it was probably a forest fire,
Speaker 1: that's what it was. And some some folks, just like
Speaker 1: in our forest fire situation, were certain that the end
Speaker 1: of the world was at hand, and it was Carrington
Speaker 1: who knew the truth. This would later come to be
Speaker 1: recognized as a solar flare with the energy of get this,
Speaker 1: ten billion atomic bombs and that it's insane to hear that, right,
Speaker 1: But obviously it had time to dissipate, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean the fact that the Sun is how many miles
Speaker 1: away in spaces the Sun ben I'm bad at space math.
Speaker 1: I'm bad at directions in general, but uh, in particular
Speaker 1: space directions, the Sun is about let's see, we'll use
Speaker 1: the U S system. It's about ninety four point three
Speaker 1: four five million miles from Earth. And that distance if
Speaker 1: you measure things in space terms, if you had a
Speaker 1: little space ruler, you would call that distance one astronomical
Speaker 1: unit or a U or fifty thousand parsecs. No, that's
Speaker 1: not a thing. That's a star Star Wars thing that
Speaker 1: I think doesn't even make sense, even like Star Wars
Speaker 1: buffs like say, par sex is not a measure of
Speaker 1: speed or something like that. I don't know. You Star
Speaker 1: Wars nerds out there, correct me. Oh, you know what
Speaker 1: I should point out too, for an aster physicists or
Speaker 1: astronomers in the crowd, the Sun is currently as we
Speaker 1: record point three four or five million miles away, but
Speaker 1: we uh here on Earth, we get closer and further
Speaker 1: at different times, so the average is something more like thousand,
Speaker 1: nine hundred fifty five, eight hundred and seven miles totally.
Speaker 1: So I'm sorry, I got real effer say. My point
Speaker 1: is ten billion atomic bombs worth of energy dissipating over
Speaker 1: millions of miles and still having such a massive impact
Speaker 1: on people's day to day lives all over the world.
Speaker 1: That really speaks something to the the power of the Sun.
Speaker 1: It's true, and we also have to consider there's a
Speaker 1: bit of a lottery here. It's a little bit of
Speaker 1: gambling because Earth happened to be in the wrong place
Speaker 1: at the wrong time, or in the right place at
Speaker 1: the right time. If you're a fan of if you're
Speaker 1: a fan of solar disasters. The big question, though, comes
Speaker 1: down to how Richard Carrington figured this out. He was
Speaker 1: a gentleman of means, he was a man of leisure,
Speaker 1: and he didn't need to get up every day and
Speaker 1: slept for his daily bread. Like so many other people
Speaker 1: during this time. Since he had so much free time,
Speaker 1: and since he did have the financial means to support
Speaker 1: his curiosities, he got really into studying what was called
Speaker 1: natural philosophy, And in natural philosophy he focused on the
Speaker 1: field of astronomy. He didn't look at the night sky
Speaker 1: so much, though, the way so many other astronomers did. Instead,
Speaker 1: he studied the sun, and in his studies he would
Speaker 1: monitor changes on the solar surface his best he could tell,
Speaker 1: and he would try to make correlations and predictions based
Speaker 1: on the previous data he had obtained. And that's why
Speaker 1: he knew something was up, something was irregular in that
Speaker 1: early morning on September one. It makes sense, doesn't it beend,
Speaker 1: given you know, the availability of technology in the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, that you would study, like if you're into stars,
Speaker 1: you would study the closest one to you. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of weird that other people hadn't, at least to
Speaker 1: this degree. So here's what he did. This is how
Speaker 1: well off he is. He's got a country estate outside
Speaker 1: of London, is his state has a private observatory. Because
Speaker 1: this is the kind of guy who might have had
Speaker 1: a garden hermit. You know, that's how well off he is.
Speaker 1: So he has a shutter over his dome and he
Speaker 1: cranks it open slowly. He looks at the clear blue
Speaker 1: sky in front of him. He takes his telescope, points
Speaker 1: it towards the sun to brass telescope, and as he's
Speaker 1: looking at the sun, he notices this cluster of enormous
Speaker 1: dark spots that we mentioned earlier. They're kind of like
Speaker 1: freckles or moles if you have any of those. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's a dumb question, Ben, but aren't you, like not
Speaker 1: supposed to look directly into the sun, let alone with
Speaker 1: the giant magnifying instrument. Yeah, yeah, it's it's not the
Speaker 1: best move typically to look at the sun with the
Speaker 1: unaided eye, and it's especially damaging during an eclipse, which
Speaker 1: is why you need to wear special spectacles. But nonetheless,
Speaker 1: this was Carrington's bag, and he looked at the sun,
Speaker 1: and like you said, Ben, he saw these kind of
Speaker 1: eruptions coming from those clusters that you describe those sun spots.
Speaker 1: And this is something he did every day, but today
Speaker 1: was a little bit different. At eleven eighteen am by
Speaker 1: local time, he could really see change happening in these
Speaker 1: sun spots that he he was used to kind of
Speaker 1: observing that moved across the entire face of the sun
Speaker 1: spot and then gradually faded out and then disappeared. So honestly,
Speaker 1: the biggest factor in Carrington's fiver was timing. Right. He
Speaker 1: literally happened to see the event that led to the
Speaker 1: event right the upper case all caps events that we're
Speaker 1: going to describe shortly. He immediately thought maybe something was
Speaker 1: up with his telescope, uh, that something was was damaged
Speaker 1: or broken. Um. And after you know, taking a look
Speaker 1: and seeing what was going on with it, he found
Speaker 1: it to be in perfect working condition. And then realized
Speaker 1: that he had seen something very special and particularly unusual, right,
Speaker 1: and being a fledgling scientist, he at least knew that
Speaker 1: he needed confirmation, So it wasn't just a matter of
Speaker 1: he said, sun said situation. So he ran out to
Speaker 1: grab someone possibly in my head his nearby garden. He said,
Speaker 1: he come look at this telescope. Quickly, look sat on
Speaker 1: these said on these phone books, and take a look
Speaker 1: through this telescope and look at oh, yes, scard to hermit,
Speaker 1: that's a good correction and so he said, yes, my
Speaker 1: hermits come come from your meditations and staff through my
Speaker 1: brass telescope for the Sun's misbehaving. But when he got
Speaker 1: whomever it was there to be a second witness, he
Speaker 1: felt like a real dunderhead because the spots had already
Speaker 1: quote much changed and enfeebled. All in all, the thing
Speaker 1: he saw around eighteen that morning was an event that
Speaker 1: lasted less than five minutes, but during those five minutes,
Speaker 1: giga tons, according to Hackaday dot com of charged particles
Speaker 1: were blasted from the surface of the Sun and they
Speaker 1: rode the Sun's magnetic flux, so that within about seventeen
Speaker 1: to eighteen hours they would start hitting planet Earth. And
Speaker 1: to understand why Carrington was somewhat unique or somewhat distinct
Speaker 1: and noticing this, we have to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the concept of solar science. If we're being charitable,
Speaker 1: we can say modern solar sciences in its infancy in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine. And the reason he was able to
Speaker 1: not damage his eyes is because his telescope was well
Speaker 1: was crued by today's standards, of course, but it projected
Speaker 1: an image onto a white card, and that was how
Speaker 1: he was able to avoid a lot of eye damage.
Speaker 1: If you look at the Sun through a telescope without protection,
Speaker 1: now it can damage drive to be very careful. He
Speaker 1: wasn't the only person studying the Sun. Other astronomers have
Speaker 1: begun to sort of ferret out its secrets, and they discovered,
Speaker 1: perhaps most importantly, that the Sun appeared to have a cycle.
Speaker 1: The number of sun spots in their locations on the
Speaker 1: Sun's face kind of occurred in a pattern. And then
Speaker 1: they knew that they also have pieced together this stuff.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a mystery that they're investigating because
Speaker 1: they could say, Okay, we know these sun spots seem
Speaker 1: to happen on this rough cycle, and then we know
Speaker 1: that when these sun spots occur, we can see stuff
Speaker 1: happen on Earth. We can see stuff like the Aurora
Speaker 1: Borealis or the Aurora australis, and we know that there's
Speaker 1: a clear association between solar activity and the magnetic field
Speaker 1: that surrounds our planets. And even at this time, this
Speaker 1: is so fascinating, Even at this time, how impressive is this.
Speaker 1: Some solar observatories had magnetometers so they could record changes
Speaker 1: on Earth and then even more closely correlate them to
Speaker 1: solar activity. That is so cool, and just really quickly
Speaker 1: just to let's let's talk a little bit about what
Speaker 1: this coronal mass ejection is again. I picture in my
Speaker 1: mind when I hear this, you know, eruption of material
Speaker 1: from the Sun. I picture it more like the Sun
Speaker 1: is shooting fireballs at Earth and it's going to land,
Speaker 1: you know, and annihilate us like the meteor in you know, um,
Speaker 1: what's that movie called with Bruce Willis Where the Arma
Speaker 1: Get And that's the one. But it literally is just
Speaker 1: you know, these electromagnetic pulses that are super powerful, kind
Speaker 1: of along the lines of a man made version called
Speaker 1: an e MP that can be deployed to disrupt communications.
Speaker 1: It's like literally like a very powerful electromagnet that can
Speaker 1: send out these pulses. I think you've seen it in
Speaker 1: like heist movies, if it was in Ocean's eleven or
Speaker 1: they use it to like shut down vegas, uh for
Speaker 1: a brief moment so they can like you know, do
Speaker 1: their heisty dirty work. But this is essentially the same concept.
Speaker 1: And then these things disrupt electrical fields, um, which is
Speaker 1: this is where we're gonna get to. But you're right,
Speaker 1: then the technology of the time is a lot more
Speaker 1: impressive than I would have thought. I mean, it is
Speaker 1: practically nineteen hundred. And studying of the Sun, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously has gone back as far as like people looked
Speaker 1: at the Sun and we're like, what's that. But you
Speaker 1: have like Copernicus, for example, who studied the Sun in
Speaker 1: the fifteen hundreds and developed this, you know, heliocentric view
Speaker 1: of the universe, which obviously was proved to be incorrect.
Speaker 1: We know that the Sun is not in fact the
Speaker 1: center of of the universe, but it is the Earth.
Speaker 1: I love the idea of helio centric view because it
Speaker 1: reminds me of some of the anti science movements that
Speaker 1: have arisen at various times in human history, where they'll say, well,
Speaker 1: your science maybe all well and good, but it remains
Speaker 1: my view that the universe is heliocentric exactly. No, it's
Speaker 1: totally true. So we've got you're making a great point here.
Speaker 1: We also have to point out that this is something
Speaker 1: a lot of average people would not have been aware of,
Speaker 1: say your average telegraph operator. They probably did not wake
Speaker 1: up anticipating the extent of just how bad their day
Speaker 1: would become, and the stuff that Carrington was lucky enough
Speaker 1: to see was only one of multiple outbursts that the
Speaker 1: Sun would have over the next several days. M Hm,
Speaker 1: that what a naughty sun. I love the idea of
Speaker 1: the Sun having out versts, just like you know, pitching
Speaker 1: a fit, having a tantrum, kicking and screaming. It needs
Speaker 1: a nap, It really needs a nap. It needs a snack.
Speaker 1: It does. And it's it's always kind of on the sun,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I think it's a good point,
Speaker 1: but yeah. And other solar observers, you know, even professional ones,
Speaker 1: had also reported these large numbers of sun spots beginning
Speaker 1: on August of that year, with a very strong aurora
Speaker 1: effect being seen at particularly low altitudes beginning at night.
Speaker 1: If we think of an aurora, we usually think of
Speaker 1: the two, the Northern lights and the southern lights, the
Speaker 1: Aurora borealis and the Aurora austrialis right, yep. And this
Speaker 1: suggested that at least one, probably more of these sun
Speaker 1: spots had created a solar flare and then a subsequent
Speaker 1: CME that was strong enough to fling plasma and coronal
Speaker 1: matter towards Earth sometime in the earlier two days, and
Speaker 1: they know this because the electro magnetic effects of a
Speaker 1: flare are visible two people on Earth about eight minutes
Speaker 1: after they occur. But the stuff that actually gets sort
Speaker 1: of out there, that's the noise of a CME. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I had no doubt, Ben. That is absolutely accurate, right,
Speaker 1: because I know a lot of people are gonna say, well,
Speaker 1: how can sound work in a vacuum? Don't don't test
Speaker 1: the sci fi too much. It is literally and that
Speaker 1: stuff takes several days to travel those Uh, let's just
Speaker 1: ballpark at nine million miles d fifty million kilometers between
Speaker 1: the Sun and the Earth, and those eruptions still as
Speaker 1: big as they were, and they are big, they pale
Speaker 1: in comparison to that sept Tember first c m E.
Speaker 1: That's right, um. And as we've been hinting at and teasing,
Speaker 1: the effects of this September one coronal mass ejection or
Speaker 1: CME were reported just eighteen hours after Carrington saw what
Speaker 1: he saw. So again, it's absolute crazy, perfect timing that
Speaker 1: he really did see the very genesis of what would
Speaker 1: ultimately become a disaster all over the planet. So what
Speaker 1: this suggests was that the previous solar flares had already
Speaker 1: begun to clear the space between the Earth and the
Speaker 1: Sun so that that plasma could travel faster than its
Speaker 1: usual million miles per hour. So potentially that means that
Speaker 1: the cime that was experienced on the night of September
Speaker 1: two was actually released by an earlier unobserved flare, because
Speaker 1: it appears to be this was like a very busy
Speaker 1: time for the Sun. The Sun was just having back
Speaker 1: to back tantrums here. Um, so we start to see
Speaker 1: the effects. Yes, yeah, again, it is quite possible that
Speaker 1: there was an earlier unobserved flare, because it's tough to
Speaker 1: highlight just how lucky Carrington was to observe this directly
Speaker 1: while was happening, or you know, technically eight minutes after
Speaker 1: it happened for five minutes. Anyhow, no matter what the
Speaker 1: original culprit was, this arriving same caused the kind of
Speaker 1: geomagnetic storm you would imagine occurring in a Hollywood blockbuster
Speaker 1: today the storm, yes, yea, the Earth's magnetosphere was shoved aside,
Speaker 1: like kicked down the stairs basically, and this allowed these
Speaker 1: charged particles to get into the atmosphere. They combined with
Speaker 1: gas molecules that's what forms those northern and southern lights,
Speaker 1: and these lights spread much further than their usual range.
Speaker 1: You could see them in areas that were close to
Speaker 1: the tropics. People could read newspapers at midnight on the street,
Speaker 1: and as we said, they some people in animals like
Speaker 1: started their days too early. But these beautiful lights in
Speaker 1: the sky were just a backdrop. They were just a
Speaker 1: nice silver lining to a very dangerous cloud. The distortion
Speaker 1: of Earth's magnetic field eventually reached a point of collapse,
Speaker 1: and when that collapsing field released terra watts of energy
Speaker 1: back into Earth. People of the Victorian age were actually
Speaker 1: quite fortunate. They didn't have a ton of electrical infrastructure,
Speaker 1: so most of this current just kind of dissipated, except
Speaker 1: for the big communication system of the world at the time,
Speaker 1: the telegraph network. Yeah, the telegraph network, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: a very rudimentary infrastructure of communication, which essentially these poles
Speaker 1: connected together by wires that are amplified. I imagine, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm probably doing a very rudimentary job of explaining it.
Speaker 1: But there are essentially transformers or some kind of electrical boosting,
Speaker 1: you know, equipment that causes those signals to be relayed
Speaker 1: from poll to poll. Literally through wires, right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: This is not a wireless system. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of work that has gone into setting up the telegraph system.
Speaker 1: It was a hugely vital piece of of communication technology.
Speaker 1: You would get news, you would send private messages. You
Speaker 1: could do business much more quickly than you could by
Speaker 1: say sending a carriage or a messenger pigeon or a
Speaker 1: or a goal fashioned letter. Also, telegraph operators were aware
Speaker 1: that their system could be compromised by atmospheric activity like
Speaker 1: thunderstorms or the northern lights. But this would have been
Speaker 1: what would would have been referred to as the wire right,
Speaker 1: sending things by wire um. And I believe at this
Speaker 1: stage it would have been all through like Morse code,
Speaker 1: like taps, you know, you'd have like a device with
Speaker 1: a little button on it that you would tap the
Speaker 1: message into and then it would be received on the
Speaker 1: other end where someone would translate it and then deliver
Speaker 1: it correct. Yeah, yeah, that's that's the thing. The telegraph
Speaker 1: system did rely on Morse code, which is the telegraph
Speaker 1: was primarily used from the eighteen forties into the mid
Speaker 1: twentie century. And the reason Morse code was so useful
Speaker 1: is because you were coding pulses of electric current through
Speaker 1: those wires, so you weren't writing anything. You were doing
Speaker 1: dits and dashes and dots. And it's it's funny because
Speaker 1: you can learn Morse code pretty easily. There's just a
Speaker 1: series of log and short pulses that represent numbers or letters.
Speaker 1: But just like when you see somebody transcribing something in
Speaker 1: a courtroom, watching somebody actually operate a telegraph is amazing.
Speaker 1: They move so quickly, it's it's insane. I'm just tipping
Speaker 1: my tipping my podcast hat to anybody who can do
Speaker 1: Morse code at that level of speed. They had known
Speaker 1: that there would be regional disturbances could affect the system,
Speaker 1: but no one had ever experienced a disturbance of this magnitude,
Speaker 1: a global disruption. And we're going to we're gonna pause
Speaker 1: for a moment here. This is gonna be part one
Speaker 1: of our episode on the Carrington event. And trust us, folks,
Speaker 1: when we tell you things get even crazier, don't they know,
Speaker 1: Like stuff that I want you to know, level crazy,
Speaker 1: like the part in the show where things get crazy. Yes,
Speaker 1: just so, just so, And we want to thank you
Speaker 1: for coming with us on this on this bizarre solar
Speaker 1: storm journey. We also want to think, of course, our
Speaker 1: superproducers Casey Herb and Max Williams. Not to mention Alex Williams. Yes,
Speaker 1: there is a relation. Who composed our theme. Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: the Quister. You can see him again real soon if
Speaker 1: if he has anything to say about it. Um and
Speaker 1: Christopher Hascio is here in Spear and of course are
Speaker 1: good pals. Eve's Jeff Coat and our own mad solar scientists.
Speaker 1: If solar science was research, Gabe Lousier, I'm excited for
Speaker 1: cartoon noal, what about you? You know, I'm always excited
Speaker 1: for a two parter band. Well, let's hope. Let's hope
Speaker 1: that all our electronics are still working when we get there.
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows