{"id":32541,"date":"2020-09-14T00:05:21","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T07:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/?post_type=custom_news&p=32541"},"modified":"2021-05-07T09:14:38","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T16:14:38","slug":"did-a-solar-ejection-hinder-the-titanic","status":"publish","type":"custom_news","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/news\/did-a-solar-ejection-hinder-the-titanic\/","title":{"rendered":"Did a Solar Ejection Hinder the Titanic<\/em>?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a moonless night. James Bisset, the second officer of the steamship RMS Carpathia<\/em>, peered out across a chilly North Atlantic. The sea was calm, there was no wind. Above him, the effervescent aurora borealis danced in the sky. And roughly 100 kilometers away, a much larger ship\u2014the RMS Titanic\u2014<\/em>was heading for disaster. It was April 1912, and the world\u2019s most well-known maritime catastrophe was about to unfold.<\/p>\n

The Titanic<\/em>\u2019s sinking caused the deaths of around 1,500 people, a disaster that has been portrayed in countless books, films, and TV series. Historians have picked over the incident for more than a century. But a new theory has recently emerged that could help explain what happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people who write about Titanic<\/em>, they don\u2019t know that northern lights were seen on that night,\u201d asserts independent weather researcher Mila Zinkova, a retired computer programmer, who lives in San Francisco, California. Zinkova recently published an article in the journal Weather<\/em><\/a> in which she put forth a novel idea: a blast of electromagnetic radiation from the sun slammed into the Earth, lighting up the sky with the aurora and interfering with the compasses and radio equipment aboard the Titanic <\/em>and nearby vessels. It is well known that solar ejections can influence compass needles<\/a> and cause radio interference<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Zinkova suggests that an ejection of charged particles from the sun may have caused the crew to make navigational adjustments that led the Titanic<\/em> along a slightly different course than intended, potentially sending it in the direction of the iceberg that ultimately scuppered the great liner.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if the compass moved only one degree, it already could have made a difference,\u201d says Zinkova.<\/p>\n

Compass errors, however, could also have saved lives. The Carpathia<\/em>, which responded to the Titanic<\/em>\u2019s SOS call, received the wrong position for the sinking ship\u2014it was directed to a point 11 kilometers from the actual location. But because the Carpathia<\/em> was perhaps also affected by the solar storm, the crew caught sight of the survivors\u2019 lifeboats and signal flares, and managed to save 705 people.<\/p>\n

But the Titanic<\/em>\u2019s SOS wasn\u2019t heard by everyone in the vicinity. Zinkova thinks space weather may be to blame for this, too. A steamer, SS La Provence<\/em>, did not receive messages from the Titanic<\/em>, though it did hear broadcasts from other ships. And the SS Mount Temple<\/em> got the Titanic<\/em>\u2019s SOS, but the stricken vessel never received its reply.<\/p>\n

Titanic<\/em> historian Tim Maltin, who says he has disagreed with Zinkova in the past regarding other details of the sinking, says he hadn\u2019t heard of her solar storm hypothesis before. He says that while he enjoyed her article, there are alternative explanations for the events she ascribes to the solar storm.<\/p>\n

For one, while the Titanic <\/em>did give an incorrect location in its distress call, the ship\u2019s lifeboats happened to be at a position directly between the Carpathia<\/em> and the sinking steamer, which could explain how the Carpathia<\/em> found the survivors so easily. Plus, the Titanic<\/em>\u2019s wreck was located along the ship\u2019s expected route, so it had not taken an unexpected course, Maltin says.<\/p>\n

And yet eyewitness accounts make it worth considering the solar storm theory, says Chris Scott, a space and atmospheric physicist at the University of Reading in England.<\/p>\n

Besides crew member James Bisset, at least three Titanic<\/em> survivors reported seeing the aurora borealis that night. \u201cThe fact that so many people saw the aurora makes me confident that there was a space weather event happening,\u201d says Scott.<\/p>\n

And it wouldn\u2019t be unreasonable to think the solar activity affected the ships\u2019 compasses and radios. Ejections from the sun have been linked to other dramatic events, Scott says, such as the time in 1972 when dozens of sea mines suddenly exploded off the coast of Vietnam\u2014space weather is believed to have been the cause<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Maltin agrees that there probably was a solar storm the night of the Titanic<\/em>\u2019s sinking. \u201cBut I think it was not a significant factor,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Scott adds that it would be possible to test Zinkova\u2019s theory further by modeling the ionosphere\u2014the layer of charged particles in the Earth\u2019s atmosphere that interacts with the solar wind\u2014and simulating known radio broadcasts sent by ships on the nights of April 14 and 15, 1912. That might help to reveal why some signals got through while others didn\u2019t. Zinkova accepts that it would be very difficult to prove whether solar activity definitely affected the sinking. Ultimately, she says, it is the human tragedy of what happened that most moves her.<\/p>\n

Either way, Scott argues that we may all benefit from a better understanding of historical disturbances caused by the sun. In 1859, for instance, a particularly large solar storm<\/a> caused an extraordinarily bright aurora to be visible as far south as Cuba. The Carrington Event, as it is now known, affected electronic equipment, with telegraph operators witnessing sparks flying out of their machines.<\/p>\n

Careful documentation of past space weather events may prepare us for the next really big one, suggests Scott, since this could reveal new insights into how frequent these occurrences are.<\/p>\n

Taking the threat seriously could prove prudent. In an age when we are so dependent on technology, a 21st-century Carrington Event might be even more disastrous than the sinking of the Titanic<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a moonless night. James Bisset, the second officer of the steamship RMS Carpathia, peered out across a chilly North Atlantic. The sea was calm, there was no wind. Above him, the effervescent aurora borealis danced in the sky. <\/p>\n

…<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":32542,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"acf":{"hero_video_url":null,"hero_video_caption":"","deck":"Space weather may have played a small role in the famed steamer\u2019s sinking.","authors_group":[{"by_group":"by","contributors_group":[24813]}],"word_count_override":"","podbean1":"","podbean2":"","redirect":"","geolocation":null,"related":[31402,29964],"twitterimage":32544,"facebookimage":32543,"twitterdescription":"","edited":"","factchecked":"","code":"","no_old_story_flag":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32541"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/custom_news"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34954,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32541\/revisions\/34954"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/features\/29964"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/31402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}