How A Rare Solar ‘Superflare’ Could Cripple Humanity
A superflare would be hundreds or even thousands of times stronger than the largest solar flare recorded by modern instruments.With some eruptions, a related cloud of charged particles, called a coronal mass ejection (CME), billows off the sun, creating a space storm. The 2012 near-miss and the 1859 direct hit involved solar eruptions “only” five to 10 times more powerful than the March 1989 storm that knocked out Canadian power, Baker points out — nothing like Notsu’s prediction of a monster hundreds to thousands of times more powerful. Referencing a 1921 solar storm that struck Earth and is thought to have generated ground currents 10 times stronger than the 1989 Quebec event, the report explains how hundreds of failing transformers across the United States could leave 130 million people without power.
Source: onezero.medium.com