Earth was almost blasted back to the Stone Age by a devastating solar
storm in 2012, scientists have revealed.
Researchers claim the solar flare, fired out from the Sun on July 23,
could have "changed life as we know it" had it struck our planet.
Sparking a $2 trillion catastrophe, GPS systems would have been knocked
out and power supplies irrevocably damaged.
Urban water networks would also
have been disrupted, as electric pumps would have been rendered useless.
picking up the pieces," said Daniel Baker, of the University of
Colorado.
Luckily, the coronal mass ejection (CME) plasma cloud - spat out four
times faster than a typical eruption at an eye-watering 1,800 mph - didn't
strike our world.
Instead, it was ejected out and off to the side.
But, had it occurred just one week earlier, the Earth would have been
in the line of fire - and the future for humankind would have looked decidedly
different.
Baker, alongside NASA colleagues, published a study of the storm in the
journal Space Weather.
He said it was a "particularly intense" weather event because
it was following the same path a similar CME had "snowplowed" just
days before.
And he also compared it to the so-called Carrington solar storm of
September 1859, named after English astronomer Richard Carrington who
documented the event.
"In my view the July 2012 storm was in all respects at least as
strong as the 1859 Carrington event. The only difference is, it missed,"
he said.
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