Friday, March 11, 2011

Fire Leapt From Their Telegraph Keys


It was the worst solar storm in history, the Carrington Event in 1859:

In addition, the geomagnetic disturbances were strong enough that U.S. telegraph operators reported sparks leaping from their equipment—some bad enough to set fires, said Ed Cliver, a space physicist at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Bedford, Massachusetts.


NatGeo.

1 comment:

drjim said...

Yep, LOOOOONG lengths of wire make for good transformer "secondaries" when you have huge atmospheric currents.