Copyright © 2023 Thomas Bauer All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form without the prior written permission of the publisher	The Carrington Event and the Coming Miyake Disaster	For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed to: mailto:tbauer@mathandscience.org First printing edition 2023 www.mathandscience.org
^4And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.   Ezekiel 1:4-28 King James Version Artist Rendition of 1989 Quebec Blackout. Credit: NASA Rbreidbrown/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA	The Aurora Borealis, commonly called the Northern Lights, is usually visible only at high northern latitudes. But sometimes the Aurora will flare in brilliance and size enough to be seen farther south.           One such flare is even mentioned in the Bible.  Ezekiel 1:4: “And I looked, and behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire enfolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire.”            On September 1, 1859, the Earth experienced what has often been described as the “greatest Borealis flare in recorded history”.           All over the earth, brilliant Auroras blazed in the nighttime skies, glowing so brightly that birds began to chirp. Many thought the end of the world was at hand.           But fortunately, on the morning of that September day, amateur astronomer Richard Carrington had his telescope pointed toward the sun. Carrington spotted what he described as “two patches of intensely bright and white light” erupting from sunspots. Within hours those two eruptions traveled the distance from the sun, slammed into the earth’s magnet field, and fired up the Aurora.            What Carrington had discovered was the connection between solar eruptions and Aurora flare-ups. The “two patches” Carrington saw were huge solar blasts of extremely energetic electrically charged particles streaming towards the Earth. When these very energetic charged particles reached the Earth, their interaction with the Earth’s magnetic field produced a geomagnetic storm and a full spectrum of electromagnetic radiation.  The spectrum included the brilliant lights of the super Aurora. The great solar eruption and Aurora of that date is now known as the Carrington Event.           But on that day in 1859, the solar eruptions did more than just inflame the Aurora. The spectrum of radiation also included radio wavelengths, much longer than light waves. And those radio waves caused something really weird to happen. The telegraph, invented only eight years before, began crashing all around the world.  Sparks showered from telegraph machines and key operators experienced painful shocks.           With the coming of the telegraph, solar eruptions had become more than just producers of scary light shows. They began to impact our technology.            On August 4, 1972, a solar eruption knocked out long-distance phone lines across several American states. On March 13, 1989, an eruption caused the collapse of the Hydro-Quebec power grid, blacking out the entire province of Quebec, and jamming short-wave radio communication in the northern hemisphere, including Radio Free Europe.           With the dawn of the space age, solar eruptions became even more troublesome. Solar eruptions in October of 2003 fried an X-ray detector aboard a NASA satellite observing the sun. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station were ordered to take shelter because of elevated radiation levels. What would happen if a Carrington sized event happened today? Power grids, the Internet, and GPS would go down.  Lloyd’s of London has estimated that a Carrington sized event now would result in over a trillion dollars in damages to the U.S. alone! Is another Carrington Event reasonably possible? Yes. But wait. Are solar eruptions even larger than the 1859 Carrington event possible?  The answer again is yes. Enter Fusa Miyake, who in 2012 was a graduate student in physics at Nagoya University in Japan. Miyake’s research involved analyzing trees rings to measure their concentration of Carbon 14. Carbon 14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon whose decay rate is commonly used by archeologists to date historical artifacts.  Carbon 14 is created by nuclear reactions initiated by gamma rays, very short wavelength radiation, striking Nitrogen atoms. And the spectrum of radiation in the geomagnetic storms caused by solar blasts includes gamma rays. Miyake discovered huge spikes in the concentration of Carbon 14 in some of the rings. These spikes implied super massive solar eruptions in the past, ten to perhaps a hundred times the size of the Carrington Event.  These mega solar eruptions are now known as Miyake Events. Using tree rings and other sources of Carbon 14 data, scientists have identified the dates of several Miyake Events: 7176 BCE, 5410 BCE, 5259 BCE, 663 BCE, 744 CE, and 993 CE.   Miyake Events average nearly one event per thousand years, and it’s been over a thousand years since the last one. So, it’s not if, but when Earth will experience another Miyake Event. And if a Carrington Event would be a “mere” trillion-dollar disruption, just imagine a Miyake Disaster!	Solar Eruption Richard Carrington Fusa Miyake