FORCES OF NATURE · 23 JUL 2012 · EARTH
Nine days early
In July 2012 the Sun threw off the most violent storm of the space age, a Carrington-class cloud that crossed Earth's orbit and found the planet nine days gone from the spot. This is the timeline where it came nine days early, and a wired civilization was standing in its path.
You are reading the timeline that almost was · notes marked THE RECORD are real history
23 JUL 2012 · 02:08 UT
In the summer of 2012 the Sun neared the peak of its eleven-year cycle. On 23 July, at eight minutes past two in the morning, a region on its face threw out two coronal mass ejections a quarter-hour apart. A smaller eruption days before had swept the road clear, so the pair lost almost nothing to friction and arrived as one. It was one of the fastest and strongest storm clouds ever measured, billions of tonnes of magnetized plasma running as fast as three thousand kilometres a second. It crossed the orbit of the Earth in under nineteen hours. But the Earth, on its own long track around the Sun, had rounded that patch of sky nine days earlier and moved on. The storm tore through the place where the planet had been, and struck only a small NASA probe left watching there, STEREO-A.
In the timeline recorded here, the eruption comes nine days early. The Earth waits in the door with every light burning.
The atlas keeps other pages near this one
