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In a new paper (see link below) put forth by Mila Zinkova, a weather researcher at UC San Francisco, the author proposes that space weather may have been the primordial culprit of the sinking of the Titanic. According to Dr. Zinkova, a moderate to severe geomagnetic storm caused by a coronal mass ejection (CME) from the Sun, may have interfered with the navigational instruments on the Titanic, causing the ship to slightly deviate from its course and setting it on a collision path with the lurking iceberg.
According to historical records, on the night of April 15, the sky in the North Atlantic was ablaze with Northern Lights activity. Author Lawrence Beesley, who survived the calamitous event, described the aurora borealis around the ship as "a faint glow in the sky ahead on the starboard quarter, the first gleams, we thought, of the coming dawn." After compiling and analyzing several testimonies about the conditions in the sky that night, Zankova is almost certain that the magnetic disturbances around the Titanic were severe enough to slightly disrupt its magnetic compass, which threw the ship into a path of destruction.