In 2024, superstorm Gannon generated auroras-and wreaked havoc on this radiation-blocking layer. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Last year, the most violent geomagnetic storm to strike Earth in over two decades did more than disrupt GPS systems and internet connections. According to a study published today in the journal, superstorm Gannon also squeezed the planet's protective layer of ionized particles to one-fifth its normal size. Geomagnetic storms aren't rare occurrences, but most of them remain relatively benign.

It's the first coronal mass ejection seen outside our sun. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Skygazers can once again thank the sun for the latest round of Northern Lights that recently danced above much of the United States. Also known as the aurora borealis in the north, (or aurora australis in the Southern Hemisphere) these night sky events get their start on the sun's surface after coronal mass ejections (CMEs) spew ionized clouds of high energy particles towards Earth. The radiation then interacts with the planet's magnetosphere and generates the vivid colors in Earth's atmosphere-as well as the occasional electrical grid and satellite array headache .

'Should such an event occur, there are no good solutions.' A solar flare seen by the ESA's Solar Orbiter. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Governmental disaster preparedness isn't limited to crises that originate here on Earth. In fact, experts know that some of the most disruptive and unpredictable occurrences begin on the surface of the sun .

A Northumbria University physicist has been awarded more than half a million pounds to develop artificial intelligence which will protect the Earth from devastating space storms. Activity from the Sun such as solar eruptions, known as Coronal Mass Ejections, results in plasma being fired towards Earth at supersonic speeds, which can result in serious disruption to power and communication systems. With our increasing reliance on technology, solar storms pose a serious threat to our everyday lives, leading to severe space weather being added to the UK National Risk Assessment for the first time in 2011. Northumbria's Dr Andy Smith has recently been awarded a Research Fellowship from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to explore how physics-inspired machine learning could be used to forecast space weather more accurately and predict serious space storms. During the Next Generation, Physics-Inspired AI for Space Weather Forecasting project, Dr Smith and his team will analyse huge amounts of data from satellites and space missions over the last 20 years to gain a better understanding of the conditions under which storms are likely to occur.

If the sun throws out a radiation blast of satellite-killing proportions someday, Amazon Web Services may well play a role in heading off a technological doomsday. That's the upshot of a project that has NASA working with AWS Professional Services and the Amazon Machine Learning Solutions Lab to learn more about the early warning signs of a solar superstorm, with the aid of artificial intelligence. Solar storms occur when disturbances on the sun's surface throw off a blasts of radiation and eruptions of electrically charged particles at speeds of millions of miles per hour. A sufficiently strong radiation blast can impact radio communications over half of the globe. And if the eruptions, known as coronal mass ejection or CMEs, are strong enough and sweep directly past Earth, they can damage satellites and bring down power grids.