Earth May Be Twice As Vulnerable to Extreme Solar Storms As Scientists Thought

Earth may be far more vulnerable to powerful solar storms than scientists realized, with extreme events potentially hitting modern technology twice as hard as previous models predicted. New research suggests that the most powerful solar storms could disturb the planet’s upper atmosphere up to twice as severely as traditional estimates predict. The solar wind, a continuous flow of electrically charged particles, moves outward through the solar system and interacts with Earth’s magnetic field. As a result, an extreme solar wind measurement at L1 may be compared with a less extreme response at Earth. The analysis indicates that the effects of the most extreme storms could be about twice as large as earlier models suggested.