Author: Maarten Blaauw, Professor, School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen's University Belfast

In September 1859, the same year that Darwin published On the Origin of Species, telegraph systems across Europe and North America stopped working and started sparking, leading to fires in some cases. Just hours before, researchers had observed the first ever confirmed solar flare – an intense burst of radiation emitted from the Sun. It was a warning something big was about to hit our planet. Most of the northern and southern skies lit up with brilliant auroras (northern and southern lights) signalling that a massive solar storm was underway. This storm, later named the Carrington event, was one of…