Fierce solar blasts that could have badly damaged electrical grids and disabled satellites in space narrowly missed Earth in 2012, U.S. researchers said.
The bursts would have wreaked havoc on the Earth's magnetic field, matching the severity of the 1859 Carrington Event, the largest solar magnetic storm ever reported on the planet. That blast knocked out the telegraph system across the U.S., according to University of California, Berkeley, physicist Janet Luhmann.
"Had (the 2012 event) 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," Luhmann said. A 2013 study estimated that a solar storm like the Carrington Event could take a $2.6 trillion bite out of the global economy.