Today is the anniversary of an historic solar storm, the Carrington Event. On Sept. 2, 1859, a CME struck Earth's magnetic field with such power that telegraph stations caught fire and people in Cuba read their morning newspapers by the red light of the aurora borealis. If a similar storm struck our planet today, it might cause trillions of dollars of damage to society's high-tech infrastructure. Could the Carrington Event happen again? It almost did just a few years ago. Extreme solar storms--past, present and future--are highlighted on today's edition of http://spaceweather.com .
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