Solar Storm

About 41,000 years ago, Homo sapiens may have survived increased solar radiation caused by a weakening magnetic field by using sunscreen-like ochre, tailored clothing, and caves. Neanderthals, lacking these technologies, likely faced greater exposure and disappeared around the same time. Ancient Homo sapiens may have survived a spike in solar…

We're in solar storm season. That's because 2025 is the peak of the sun's 11-year cycle of activity. Electrically charged particles fly from our neighborhood star into Earth's magnetosphere, where a powerful magnetic field surrounds our planet. From there, many things can happen – auroras, and even electrical shorts in…

SPHEREx, NASA’s latest astrophysics observatory, has launched aboard a Falcon 9 rocket alongside PUNCH, a mission studying solar wind. SPHEREx will create a 3D map of the universe, helping to uncover cosmic history and the building blocks of life. Its observations will complement those of telescopes like Hubble and Webb...Read…

Solar storms sound intense but aren't as scary (for Earth) as you might think. Javier Zayas Photography / Getty Images In 1859, the Carrington Event was the most intense global solar storm ever recorded. The effects were felt all over the Earth. Telegraph systems in Europe and North America lost…

An Incoming solar storm could strike Earth tonight, triggering geomagnetic storm conditions and northern lights as far south as New York and Idaho. (Image credit: Alan Perlman / 500px via Getty Images) Heads up aurora chasers! We could be in for a treat tonight. A coronal mass ejection (CME) from…

Romance is in the air today — and also predicted to be in space tonight. The conditions are perfect for a Valentine’s Day date with the aurora borealis on February 14, 2025. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says a solar wind stream is heading toward Earth just in…

Aurora above the coast of Northern Ireland. (Image credit: Evan Boyce) The great solar storm of May 2024, which sparked beautiful auroral displays over much of the world, also created two new radiation belts that were observed with a satellite that came back from the dead. "This is really stunning,"…

They can put a man on the Moon - but back on Earth, a busted water pipe managed to knock out NASA's solar mission data for months. Data from two NASA solar missions is becoming available again following an outage that began in November 2024. The affected missions are the…

In May 2024, our planet was hit by the largest solar storm in 20 years. GPS signals were disrupted, beautiful auroras glowed in the sky—and two new belts of energy appeared around the Earth, as new research shows. Scientists in the U.S. have announced the discovery of two new temporary…

The May 2024 solar storm created two new temporary belts of high-energy particles surrounding Earth. Such belts have been seen before, but the new ones were particularly long lasting, especially the new proton belt.  The findings are particularly important for spacecraft launching into geostationary orbits, which can be damaged as…