On July 23rd 2012 a massive solar storm eruption from the Sun sent a colossal plasma cloud of magnetic energy hurtling through Earth’s orbit at over 3000km a second, and if the eruption had taken place the week before it would have collided directly with our planet. Should this have happened, modern life would have come to a standstill and we would still be recovering today.
A solar flare is an enormous explosion on the surface of the sun when a massive build up of magnetic energy is suddenly released. They are the most powerful explosions in the solar system and can equal the intensity of 1 billion hydrogen bombs detonating at once. A Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) is a large bubble of magnetic gas that erupts from these solar flares and launches outwards away from the sun, two of these CME’s were launched from the Sun within minutes of each other in 2012 and narrowly missed the Earth, with us being none the wiser of what just almost hit us.