The first account of a solar storm that disrupted technology contained a serious typo

For most of human history, our Sun’s occasional tantrums have been of little concern to those of us living on the Earth’s surface. At most, plasma emissions crashing into our atmosphere could paint the sky in pretty shades of green or pink.

With the development of electrical grids in the mid-19th century came the possibility of solar activity impacting our planet in a completely new way, as charged particles guided by our magnetic field could now induce current spikes through the lower circuits and interfere with our communication.

While the threat of solar activity disrupting modern technology is an increasingly pressing concern for us today, it is a cause of curiosity (and due diligence in scientific record-keeping) to pinpoint the first moment the Sun ruined our electronic chatter.

In 2013, Baylor University space historian William B. Cade found an anonymous report in an old issue of Nature claiming that a “very intense magnetic disturbance” was responsible for the delay of a train in England in 1841. If verified, it would be the first known case of a solar storm affecting our technology.

Working with fellow researchers, Cade now has good reason to believe that Nature The report is most likely inaccurate: the train’s rail route did not exist until 1846.

To get to the bottom of the mystery of the article’s spurious dating, Cade and a team of researchers from around the world examined historical reports and observations of geomagnetic activity to set the record straight.

Cooke and Wheatstone’s telegraph can be considered the first commercial form of long-distance electronic communication. It used changes in electrical current to rotate magnetized needles on a display board, allowing coded messages to be transmitted quickly over a handful of wires over great distances.

Robert Stephenson’s burgeoning locomotor system was the perfect pioneer in adopting this revolutionary communications network. While experimental versions of this technology date back to the mid-1830s, it was not until July 1837 that a full-scale version was installed along one of London’s first railway lines.

Still, at just over a mile long, there was little potential for geomagnetic activity to make its presence known to operators. Only with the advent of more powerful batteries could transmission lines be expanded, leading to the constant installation of wiring on numerous railway networks in the early 1840s.

By the end of the decade, there were already suspicions of a curious connection between the sky and telegraphic activity, when the civil engineer William Barlow reported to the Royal Society of “strong alternating deviations” of the telegraph needles on numerous railway networks on the afternoon of 19 March 1847, just as a “bright aurora” was seen.

On October 5, 1871, an unknown author made a very similar observation about an event that occurred in the early days of the railway telegraph, writing;

“On October 18, 1841, a very intense magnetic disturbance was recorded, and among other curious facts is mentioned the stopping of the 10:05 pm express train at Exeter for sixteen minutes, since from the magnetic disturbance it was impossible to determine whether the line was clear at Starcross. The Exeter superintendent reported the next morning that someone was playing with the instruments and not letting them work.”

After confirming that the Exeter line through the village of Starcross did not open until late May 1846, Cade and his team turned to the timetable for additional clues.

In fact, there was a 10.05pm service from Exeter, in 1848 and 1849.

Newspaper reports and records from the Greenwich Observatory archives revealed another important clue. The skies over England were bright with auroras on October 18, 1848, as the Sun entered a more active phase of its solar cycle.

All signs pointed to a simple typographical error, where Nature had printed 1841 instead of the correct year of 1848.

To non-historians, the difference of a few years may seem quite trivial. However, researchers often review historical records for signs of astronomical phenomena, using dates of anomalous observations to look for patterns that can help us better understand our Universe.

This research was published in Space weather.

Source: Baylor University