{"id":123958,"date":"2021-06-18T21:27:50","date_gmt":"2021-06-19T04:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/solar-storms-are-back-threatening-life-as-we-know-it-on-earth"},"modified":"2021-06-18T21:27:50","modified_gmt":"2021-06-19T04:27:50","slug":"solar-storms-are-back-threatening-life-as-we-know-it-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/solar-storms-are-back-threatening-life-as-we-know-it-on-earth","title":{"rendered":"Solar storms are back, threatening life as we know it on Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/solar-storms-are-back-threatening-life-as-we-know-it-on-earth2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A few days ago, millions of tons of super-heated gas shot off from the surface of the sun and hurtled 90 million miles toward Earth.<\/p>\n<p>The eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, wasn\u2019t particularly powerful on the space-weather scale, but when it hit the Earth\u2019s magnetic field it triggered the strongest geomagnetic <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/storm\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">storm<\/a> seen for years. There wasn\u2019t much disruption this time\u2014few people probably even knew it happened\u2014but it served as a reminder the sun has woken from a yearslong slumber.<\/p>\n<p>While invisible and harmless to anyone on the Earth\u2019s surface, the geomagnetic waves unleashed by solar storms can cripple <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/power+grids\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">power grids<\/a>, jam radio communications, bathe airline crews in dangerous levels of radiation and knock critical satellites off kilter. The sun began a new 11-year cycle last year and as it reaches its peak in 2025 the specter of powerful space weather creating havoc for humans grows, threatening chaos in a world that has become ever more reliant on technology since the last big storms hit 17 years ago. A recent study suggested hardening the grid could lead to $27 billion worth of benefits to the U.S. power industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few days ago, millions of tons of super-heated gas shot off from the surface of the sun and hurtled 90 million miles toward Earth. The eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, wasn\u2019t particularly powerful on the space-weather scale, but when it hit the Earth\u2019s magnetic field it triggered the strongest geomagnetic storm seen for [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,2028],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-satellites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}