Next solar storm may hit Earth? Are we really prepared for it? What NASA said
The Sun has entered a new solar cycle during which it starts shooting matter into space that brews an inferno for the Earth. These solar storms are mostly not extremely powerful, but that is not always the case. A solar storm, if it is powerful enough, can destroy civilisation as we know it today. The solar storm that always comes to the front, when we are talking about the really powerful ones, is one branded as the Carrington Event. On September 1, 1859, British astronomers Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson were tracking a large, irregular sunspot on the Sun when a tremendous flare appeared over it all of a sudden. The flare was observed by Carrington as "intensely bright" and "moving from the left to the right of the sunspot in just about 5 minutes." Then, as quickly as the flare appeared, it vanished completely. However, it had brewed a solar storm that was intensely large, as became clear soon enough. Within days, the Earth witnessed the dazzling auroras on the poles. However, even in those technologically very poor days, the solar storm caused communications lines to carry electricity and things caught fire spontaneously. The Carrington Event is still known as the strongest solar storm to hit Earth.
Not that the Sun stopped generating a big enough solar storm since then. It has continued, but Earth was lucky enough that none of them were shot directly at it - they missed Earth, many times by the proverbial whisker. Now that the new solar cycle has started, fear has been expressed that a new, very powerful solar storm, may hit the Earth and that humanity is not prepared for it. In short, it will cause a catastrophe.
When the Sun emits matter or energy in the form of solar flares and coronal mass ejections a
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