Don't Panic…but a solar storm could be a disaster
The Supermassive Podcast
Izzie Clarke
4.6 • 556 Ratings
🗓️ 24 September 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's been 166 years since scientists recorded the world's most powerful solar explosion. Izzie, Dr Becky and Dr Robert Massey are big fans of anniversaries, so they investigate how the Carrington Event affected the Earth - and why something similar today could be devastating.
Thanks to Kate Bond from the Royal Astronomical Society and Matthew West from ESA's Vigil for joining us on this episode.
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The Supermassive Podcast is a Boffin Media production. The producers are Izzie Clarke and Richard Hollingham.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Solar flares can release the same amount of energy as hundreds of thousands of years worth of global human energy consumption. |
| 0:10.4 | If we had a storm with this magnitude again, we're in serious trouble. |
| 0:14.0 | People are always like, are you afraid of getting sucked into a black hole? I'm like, no, have you heard of the Garland of it? |
| 0:21.5 | Hello and welcome to the supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society. |
| 0:26.7 | With me, science journalist Izzy Clark and astrophysicist Dr. Becky Smythurst. |
| 0:31.3 | It's been 166 years this month since the Carrington event. |
| 0:35.7 | So to celebrate that somewhat weird milestone, |
| 0:38.1 | this episode is all about solar flares, |
| 0:41.1 | coronal mass ejections, |
| 0:42.4 | and the missions that are trying to detect them. |
| 0:44.8 | What do you mean, Becky? |
| 0:45.6 | Everyone celebrates 166 years of any major event. |
| 0:49.0 | If any of us make it, I'm sure we will be as well. |
| 0:53.0 | And obviously, Dr. Robert Massey is here to the deputy director of the Royal Astronomical Society. |
| 0:59.0 | So Robert, bring us up to speed. |
| 1:01.2 | What was the Carrington event? |
| 1:02.9 | Well, there's actually a nice connection with the RAS for this one, the Royal Astronomical Society. |
| 1:06.5 | As we'll see later on, there's a record of it in our library. |
| 1:09.0 | And if you want to look at the discovery papers, the original drawings, you can do that for free online. And monthly notices |
| 1:15.1 | the Royal Astronomical Society to do a kind of plug for our journal there as well. But the key |
| 1:20.0 | thing to understand is on the 1st of September 1859, two astronomers, Richard Carrington and Richard |
| 1:25.9 | Hudson, were independently observing a really big |
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