ESA/NASA/Soho
If there were a solar storm as strong as the Carrington event of 1859, would it knock out the electronics in planes so they couldn’t land safely?
Mike Follows
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, UK
The sun emits solar wind and occasional solar flares, followed by coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which release clouds of up to a billion tonnes of charged particles into space. While most CMEs miss Earth, those coming our way typically take one to five days to reach us. Our magnetosphere deflects most of the particles, and the atmosphere protects us from ionising radiation, but CMEs can cause…
