Engineering a response to the solar storm threat

A blinding and lasting flash of white light, telegraph wires and towers engulfed in flames ensuing a blackout for days, green hazy hues across the night sky...

Whilst this may seem like the opening scene of an apocalyptic novel, it echoes accounts of the infamous 1859 Carrington event : an extreme geomagnetic solar storm that wreaked havoc on telegraph systems all over Europe and North America, sparked and electrocuted system operators, and produced dazzling auroras that were reported globally.

This geomagnetic storm is thought to have been initiated by a major coronal mass ejection (CME), an expulsion of Earth-directed plasma and magnetic field from the Sun’s corona, which took almost 18 hours to hit.

The  event, named after its observer Richard Carrington, remains the largest geomagnetic storm recorded in history, and many believe that our modern technology and infrastructure  would experience catastrophic effects if a storm of similar magnitude was to hit Earth today.