In 2012 a solar storm sent magnetized plasma flying through Earth's orbit, barely missing us.
If the storm remnants had hit the Earth it could have disabled GPS systems and satellites as well as interfered with electricity, a University of California, Berkeley news release reported.
The storm would have been as large as the biggest ever recorded, the Carrington Event of 1859. This storm literally knocked out the entire U.S. telegraph system, which was the major form of communication at the time. This recent storm could have called immeasurable damage.
"Had it hit Earth, it probably would have been like the big one in 1859, but the effect today, with our modern technologies, would have been tremendous," UC Berkeley research physicist Janet G. Luhmann said in the news release.
A study suggested had the storm hit, it could have cost the world $2.6 trillion.
"An extreme space weather storm - a solar superstorm - is a low-probability, high-consequence event that poses severe threats to critical infrastructures of the modern society," UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow at the time and research physicist Ying D. Liu,who is with the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said in the news release. "The cost of an extreme space weather event, if it hits Earth, could reach trillions of dollars with a potential recovery time of [four to] 10 years. Therefore, it is paramount to the security and economic interest of the modern society to understand solar superstorms."
The storm was caused by two huge coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that leapt from the Sun with the force of about a billion hydrogen bombs each.
"People keep saying that these are rare natural hazards, but they are happening in the solar system even though we don't always see them. It's like with earthquakes - it is hard to impress upon people the importance of preparing unless you suffer a magnitude 9 earthquake," Luhmann said.
Researchers are using solar observations to better-understand and predict this type of solar activity.
"Observations of solar superstorms have been extremely lacking and limited, and our current understanding of solar superstorms is very poor," Liu said. "Questions fundamental to solar physics and space weather, such as how extreme events form and evolve and how severe it can be at the Earth, are not addressed because of the extreme lack of observations."
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