A revelation by NASA explain how on July 23, 2012, Earth had a close to miss with a solar flare, or coronal mass ejection (CME), from the majority powerful storm on the sun in over 150 years, but nobody determined to mention it.

Err, what? Well, that’s a sobering bit of reports.

“If it had hit, we would still be option up the pieces,” says Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado. We managed to just avoid the event through fluky timing as the sun’s aim narrowly turned left from Earth. Had it occurred a week earlier, when it was point at us, the result could have been frighteningly diverse.

“I have come away from our recent studies extra convinced than still that Earth and its inhabitants were very fortunate that the 2012 eruption happened when it did,” says Baker. “If the eruption had occurred only one week previous, Earth would have been in the line of fire.”
The control of this ejection would have raced across space to knock us back to the Dark Ages. It’s believed a direct CME hit would have the possible to wipe out communication network, GPS and electrical grids to reason widespread blackout. The article goes on to say it would disable “all that plugs into a wall socket. The majority people wouldn’t even be able to flush their toilet because urban water supplies mainly rely on electric pumps.”
Just 10 minutes without power, Internet or communication across the globe is a scary consideration, and the effects of this event could previous years. It would be chaos and disaster on an epic scale.

“According to a learn by the National Academy of Sciences, the totality economic impact could exceed $2 trillion or 20 times better than the costs of a Hurricane Katrina. Multi-ton transformers injured by such a storm might get years to repair.”
So can we breathe a universal sigh of relief? Well, not quite. Physicist Pete Riley, who published a document titled “On the probability of occurrence of great space weather events,” has calculated the odds of a solar storm sturdy enough to disturb our lives in the next 10 years is 12 percent.
“Initially, I was quite astonished that the odds were so high, but the statistics appear to be right,” says Riley. “It is a sobering figure.”

However, the CME that roughly battered us was a bit of a freak occurrence as it was really two ejections within 10 minutes of each other, plus a earlier CME had happened four days earlier to efficiently clear the path.

Sleep fine, everyone.