We're (probably) doomed: Experts think the Sun may produce gigantic, electronics-destroying superflares much more often than we previously thought

pcgamer.com:

I've always wanted to write «We're doomed» with reasonable justification, and well, here we are. A study published by astronomers at the Max Planck Institute has concluded that, based on observations made by the Kepler space telescope, the occurrence rate of superflares from stars just like our sun may occur much more often than previously thought.

A superflare is essentially a solar megastorm, much more powerful than a regular solar flare and capable of releasing phenomenal amounts of electromagnetic radiation (via LiveScience). Past studies have indicated that superflares were likely to happen once every few thousand years, but a study of 56,000 sun-like stars has shown that powerful superflares may occur more like once every century. Bully.

That would make our own beloved orb somewhat overdue for a superflare of its own—and the effects on modern infrastructure would likely be immense.

The researchers attribute this new, much higher predicted likelihood to a new flare detection method that better identifies flare sources in light curves and images with sub-pixel resolution, essentially ruling back in stars that were previously excluded from the study.

Previous attempts to calculate the likelihood of superflare events also excluded many sun-like stars by only considering those with similar rotation periods, a bias this new research takes steps to avoid. Using this new methodology, the researchers identified 2,889 superflares coming from 2,527 stars like our sun between 2009 and 2013.

So what happens if our sun decides to have a gigantic burp of the electromagnetic variety? Well, the Carrington event is regarded to be the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history and is believed to have been caused by a coronal mass ejection in 1859 that bombarded the Earth with electromagnetic radiation.

Back in the less-technologically-advanced days of 1859, this wasn't a particularly big deal, although telegraph systems all over Europe and North America were said to