Earth barely missed a catastrophic "solar superstorm" in 2012 that would have disabled satellites and disrupted electronic devices.
Researchers from University of California, Berkley worked alongside with experts from China to discover Earth dodged a "huge magnetic bullet" in July 2012, according to a press release issued by the university.
The team used data from a number of places, like NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft, to study the event.
If the eruptions took place just nine days sooner, the effect it would have had on Earth would have been "tremendous" according to the researchers.
"Had it hit Earth, it probably would have been like the big one in 1859, but the effect today, with our modern technologies, would have been tremendous," one of the research leaders, Janet G Luhmann, said, according to the release
Research was published in the journal Nature Communications recently.
It would have likely matched the Carrington Event, which occurred in 1859, and knocked out communication power lines and systems around the U.S. The Northern Lighters were visible as far south as Hawaii during the incident.
"An extreme space weather storm, a solar superstorm, is a low-probability, high-consequence event that poses severe threats to critical infrastructures of the modern society," said Ying D Liu, National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. "The cost of an extreme space weather event, if it hits Earth, could reach trillions of dollars with a potential recovery time of four to 10 years. "Therefore, it is paramount to the security and economic interest of the modern society to understand solar superstorms."
A study of the solar superstorm, which took place on July 22 and 23, 2012, as formed by the interactions of two individual coronal mass ejections (CMEs), is showing experts new information regarding space weather events that have the potential to disturb life on Earth.
Some researchers wish Earth had been in the way, like Luhmann.
"What an experiment that would have been. People keep saying that these are rare natural hazards, but they are happening in the solar system even though we don't always see them," said Luhmann. "It's like with earthquakes, it is hard to impress upon people the importance of preparing unless you suffer a magnitude nine earthquake."
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