This turned out to be the most intense solar storm in history, the Carrington event.

The sun shot a huge amount of its hot plasma at the earth which caused mass destruction.

Gold miners in the Rocky Mountains woke up at 1am thinking the sun had risen because the aurora was so bright.

Telegraph systems across the world were working without being connected to the power at all.

They were just running off the insane amount of current caused by the event.

Messages from New York to Pittsburgh were sent without any electricity.

The terrifying thing is these events are not rare, and I mean seriously not rare.

Aurora was seen all around the world and even though you might typically expect to only see aurora in places like Iceland or Finland, the event was so extreme that aurora could be seen even here in Australia.

The local newspaper from this region on September 7th 1859 even wrote, most of our readers saw last week for three nights commencing after sunset and lighting up the heavens with a gorgeous hue of red, the southern aurora.

Back in 2012, a solar superstorm as big as the Carrington event narrowly missed the earth by just 12 days, and these events come in cycles.

Every 11 years the sun's magnetic field completely flips which causes a ton of solar activity, and we are entering the next solar maximum right now.

So the real question is, what would happen if the event happened again today?

Because in the modern age, everything relies on electricity.

The lights in our homes, the phones in our hands, and even now many of our cars are dependent on electricity.

So how would we recover if the world's energy grid was knocked offline for multiple years?

These events emit an unfathomable amount of energy.

The Carrington flare carried 4 by 10 to the power of 32 ergs of energy.

This is roughly equivalent to 700 billion nuclear bombs the size of Little Boy, the Hiroshima bomb.

A 2013 study estimated that the electrical outages caused by a Carrington level event would cost 2.6 trillion dollars for the North American power industry alone.

There would be global blackouts lasting years.

No lights anywhere in the world for the first time in centuries.

I mean call me selfish, but can you imagine the view everyone would have of the stars at night?

This blackout would happen because the event would damage these extremely high voltage transformers that are insanely difficult to replace.

But what about our activities in space?

What would something like this do to satellites, rockets, telescopes?

If it did occur while people were working on the moon base as this kind of radiation is not kind to the human body.

Satellites that orbit really high above the earth are in big danger too.

These satellites are smashed with high energy particles leaving them damaged and the scary thing is most of these high orbit satellites control our communications and GPS.

I mean Starlink has already lost 50 million dollars worth of satellites to geomagnetic storms.

What scares me even more is the Carrington event, which is the biggest solar storm in recorded history, is actually relatively small compared to older events.

Scientists were able to look at the tree rings in ancient forests like this one and measure carbon-14 atoms in each ring.

Spikes in the carbon-14 atoms suggest a super flare occurred in that year and they found huge spikes in the year 994.

And for these events to be found in the tree rings they would have had to have been massive, maybe 10 times or even 100 times bigger than the Carrington event.

So why do these crazy events keep happening and why do I think we're entering the most dangerous period for solar activity of the entire decade?

Well just like the seasons the sun actually has cycles.

Every 11 years the sun's During these maximums the sun is extremely active, regularly emitting CMEs.

Our current cycle started back in 2019 and it will reach its maximum in the year 2025.

We still don't fully understand these cycles and we are always learning more but there is one thing that is for certain, we need to be prepared for 2025.

Well I guess the ultimate question is what can we actually do to protect ourselves and it all starts with detecting it to give everyone as much warning as possible.

Using the SOHO spacecraft we are constantly looking for these ejections of mass to see if they are aimed at us and when we do see one heading for us we can calculate when it will arrive and based on the speed this normally gives us around 12 to 48 hours worth of warning.

This time is precious so everyone will need to act quickly.

Governments need to sound alarms and order all energy grids to be shut down and disconnected.

Everyone will need to disconnect their electronics and wrap their phones and other small electronics in tin foil to prevent them from being fried.

Satellites will be put into safety mode to protect them from being damaged.

If everything is done quickly we will be able to reconnect the grid and start everything back up.

Hospitals and other emergency services require electricity and under these conditions they simply can't have access to the power that they need so people would likely die as a result of it.

Your car would probably be okay but many of the electronic components would be completely fried.

The screens, the charging ports and the reversing cameras would all probably be destroyed.

The odds aren't insanely high but the danger is definitely real.

Some scientists believe that there is a 12% chance we will be hit by a Carrington level event in the next 10 years and we're about to enter the most dangerous period, the solar maximum.

If there was an asteroid heading for the earth everyone would be going crazy but these things are quiet.

Solar storms strike in the darkness and pose a threat to the entire globe.

It's not a matter of if one hits us but when and when it does we need to be prepared.