Aurora: Dawn of the North - Part II

Particles from the sun carry their own magnetic energy, different from Earth’s. When a Coronal Mass Ejection from the Sun wreaks havoc on Earth’s magnetic field, the combination of energy impacts electrical infrastructure.

The Week the Sun Touched the Earth

The largest electromagnetic storm ever recorded on Earth produced a week-long Aurora Borealis/Australis in September 1859.

Reports archived in newspapers around the world recall the solar superstorm and resulting aurorae. The lights of the “Dawn of the North” were visible throughout North America, and from Mexico and the Caribbean to Columbia and southern Japan.

Because amateur astronomer Richard Carrington had documented large sunspots and an eruption of solar light preceding the activity, the geomagnetic storm became known as the Carrington Event. The massive solar flare held the energy of 10 billion atomic bombs and served the Earth a direct hit, becoming the largest geomagnetic storm on record.

Telegraph operators reported currents so powerful that platinum contacts were so hot they were in danger of melting, that “streams of fire” were coming from the circuits. A D.C. operator was electrocuted by a ground wire near his forehead, and stations that used chemicals to mark sheets reported that power surges in the lines caused papers to combust.

A The New York Times article published in the wake of the Auroral phenomenon included a transcript of an exchange between two telegraph operators. Both were working on September 2, one in Boston and the other in Portland, Maine. Their lines were overwhelmed with the combination of battery power and the electromagnetism in the air, making it difficult to transmit understandable messages. In looking for a way to get the lines up and running again, the operator in Boston suggested they cut their battery power. The operator

in Portland disconnected, and their exchange continued:

Boston: “Mine is disconnected, and we are working with the auroral current. How do you receive my writing?”

Portland: “Better than with our batteries on. Current comes and goes gradually.”

Boston: “My current is very strong at times, and we can work better without the batteries, as the Aurora seems to neutralize and augment our batteries alternately, making current too strong at times for our relay magnets. Suppose we work without batteries while we are affected by this trouble.”

Portland: “Very well.”

Telegraph interruptions due to auroral activity were recorded across the globe during the 1859 event. Today, such a powerful geomagnetic storm would serve a bigger blow to the global population, simply because of our advances in and prevalence of technology.

Researchers have studied potential impacts of a Carrington-class event today, and they estimate that widespread electrical disruption, blackouts and damages to grids would cost trillions of dollars to repair. Technologies that rely on the power grid and/or satellite signals would likely be unusable for an extended period of time, impacting things like electronic payment systems, television, radio, internet, mobile networks and GPS.

Aurora & Titanic

Like telegraphs, compasses were a heavily-relied upon technology during the 19th and 20th centuries. Compasses are also impacted by electromagnetic forces, which brings us back to the question posed in the previous Northern Lights article: could a geomagnetic storm on the night of April 14/15, 1912, played a role in the tragedy of Titanic?

A researcher recently released a report in which she explores the possible connection between the aurora and Titanic’s sinking. In it, she presents evidence of elevated geomagnetic activity on that night, including accounts of the visible aurora.

James Bisset, an officer aboard the Carpathia,

wrote of the spectacular light show he spotted in the sky around 2240 (an hour before Titanic struck the iceberg).

“There was no moon,” Bisset wrote, “but the Aurora Borealis glimmered like moonbeams shooting up from the northern horizon.”

Five hours later, Carpathia arrived at the wreck site to rescue survivors.

Titanic survivor Lawrence Beesley also recounted his view of the northern lights that night as he and a group of others waited in a lifeboat for rescue:

“Towards 3 a.m., we saw a faint glow in the sky ahead on the starboard quarter, the first gleams, we thought, of the coming dawn,” Beesley recalled. “We were not certain of the time... only too glad to be able to look each other in the face and see who were our companions in good fortune; to be free from the hazard of lying in a steamer’s track, invisible in the darkness.”

When he and other survivors in the lifeboat noted the soft light growing and fading unsteadily, it became clear that the morning had not yet arrived.

“The soft light increased for a time, and died away a little; glowed again, and then remained stationary for some minutes. ‘The northern lights!’ It suddenly came to me, and so it was: Presently the light arched fanwise across the northern sky, with faint streamers reaching towards the Pole star.”

As Carpathia approached Titanic’s lifeboats in the early morning hours, the aurora’s beams were still dancing above the open water.

“The peculiar atmospheric conditions of visibility intensified as we approached the icefield with the greenish beams of the aurora borealis shimmering and confusing the horizon ahead of us to the northwards,” Bisset wrote of the scene.

The study’s author, Mila Zinkova, proposes that the geomagnetic storm that caused the aurora borealis on the night of Titanic’s sinking may have influenced the ship’s compasses and communications. Other researchers who have responded to her report think it is improbable that this contributed to the sinking; however, even those who disagree with that piece of Zinkova’s theory entertain the possibility that the magnetic storm might have impacted SOS communications during the sinking and in the rescue operations that followed. Here’s the chief reason: the ships near Titanic at the time of her sinking reported experiencing “freaky” wireless signals that night.

Radiotelegraph operators on La Provence and Mount Temple testified to the US Senate during the 1912 Disaster Hearing that they were able to communicate more clearly with ships farther away than those close by. Though they were located near Titanic on April 14/15, 1912, La Provence

could not hear Titanic’s

SOS and Mount Temple’s response to the SOS was inaudible to Titanic’s

Marconi operator.

Zinkova explains that studies of geomagnetic storms and their impact on wireless frequencies may explain why. Aurora-caused interference is more common in signals of a higher frequency and shorter wavelength, those used for short-distance communication. Wireless transmissions of higher frequencies are prone to absorption, while lowfrequency signals are enhanced by wave reflection.

It’s a viable explanation for why the nearby La Provence never heard the SOS and why Titanic operators couldn’t hear Mount Temple’s response to the cry for help.

Also pointing to geomagnetic interference is the erroneous SOS position Titanic operators gave to Carpathia. The wreck site location Carpathia received was almost seven miles away from the lifeboats, and it sent the steamer on a path directly toward the ice fields that had doomed Titanic.

The officers aboard Carpathia didn’t know of the error and steered the ship for the coordinates they had. Even so, Carpathia somehow arrived at the correct position. Zinkova believes this is a result of the compasses being influenced by the auroral activity.

“A possible combined compass error could have been one of the factors that contributed to the successful rescue of the

Titanic survivors,” she writes. “The light from the aurora may also have been beneficial to the rescue operation.”

Though the aurora may not have had an impact on the sinking of the Titanic, experts conclude of Zinkova’s theory, it may be possible that the geomagnetic impacts hindered and helped in the rescue efforts.

What a profound, eerie image—the world’s “unsinkable” ocean liner’s metal groaning as she’s swallowed by the Atlantic, incandescent curtains of auroral light shimmering above her.

After the ship sank, were those lights a comfort to the survivors adrift in lifeboats, awaiting rescue?

Or was it a disquieting reminder of how small, how lost, how far from home they were in the middle of the dark ocean?