Study Casts Doubt on 1841 Date of Earliest Reported Space Weather Disruption

The 1859 Carrington Event has long been treated as the first extreme space weather event on record, although reports of minor disturbances to telegraph equipment during geomagnetic storms date back to the late 1840s. In 2013, scholars found an anonymous report published in 1871 in Nature describing how a "very intense magnetic disturbance" disrupted rail travel in Exeter in October 1841. If accurate, that account would be the earliest known case of space weather affecting technology.

The new paper disputes that date. According to its authors, the 1841 timing is most likely a typo and the actual railway disruption took place several years afterward. Jim Wild of Lancaster University, a co-author of the study, said space weather is often framed as a modern problem because of society's reliance on satellites, communications systems and electricity networks. "What this study shows is that society has been experiencing the effects of space weather on technology for almost as long as electrical technologies have existed," Wild said. "The Exeter train delay is a fascinating story because it sits right at the point where emerging technologies first began to encounter the realities of the space environment."

The Carrington Event remains the most powerful geomagnetic storm in the scientific record. Strong auroral displays appeared around the world, causing sparking and even a few fires in telegraph stations. Some auroras were bright enough, according to contemporaneous reports, for people to read a newspaper by their light.

The telegraph was a relatively new technology at the time, having first emerged in the 1830s. The geomagnetically induced current, arising from what was likely a coronal mass ejection from the Sun, knocked out telegraph systems. Some operators discovered they could still transmit and receive messages after disconnecting the power supply, relying only on the strong auroral current.