If it had hit Earth, this coronal mass ejection could have caused continent-scale blackouts, scientists say
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe was built to withstand the ravages of the environment near our sun—and with good reason.
The encounter occurred on the far side of the sun, relative to Earth. It began on September 5, 2022, and lasted nearly two full days, scientists detail in a new paper published in the Astrophysical Journal. At the time, the Parker Solar Probe was a mere 5.7 million miles from the sun’s surface. Researchers typically have to study the sun’s outbursts from our planet, which treks an average of 93 million miles away.
The most powerful geomagnetic storm on record, called the Carrington Event, occurred in 1859, when humans had far less infrastructure that was vulnerable to such storms. Still, the Carrington Event had impressive impacts on the telegraph network and even lit some equipment on fire. Fear of such a large, Earth-directed event was part of the inspiration for the Parker Solar Probe mission. NASA hoped the mission would shed light on enduring mysteries of the sun’s activity, such as how charged particles in the solar wind that constantly flows off the sun reach such high speeds and why the sun’s atmosphere—the corona—is so incredibly hot, much hotter than the star’s surface.
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