Solar storms batter Earth every year, creating the occasional aurora and sometimes even paralyzing power grids. But these common phenomena pale in comparison to a monstrous event that inundated the planet with particles from the Sun around 14,300 years ago, identified as the strongest solar storm ever recorded in a recent study.
The study, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, has shed light on the extreme solar particle event that Earth experienced in 12,350 B.C.E. Such extreme events have only occurred a handful of times throughout history, and this is the first time one has been observed before the Holocene, around the end of the last Ice Age.
The Impacts of Solar Storms
Occasionally, the Sun launches a burst of accelerated particles into space, prompting what is called a solar particle event. These are often too weak to have considerable impacts here on Earth, although stronger events can pierce the planet’s magnetic field and disrupt technological systems.
