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The sun is ‘sneezing’ powerful solar eruptions on to Earth — and it’s increasing the risk of cancer and long-term power cuts

MASSIVE eruptions from the sun could cause long-term power cuts, destruction of electronic devices and increased cancer risk for aeroplane passengers.

Margi Murphy

This image was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and shows a blast of plasma streaming from the sun in August 2012. Picture: NASA

SCIENTISTS have made a chilling discovery about solar flares which could bring about long power cuts, bricking of electronic devices and an increased risk of cancer to aeroplane passengers.
Experts are poised to predict when these coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are on a collision course with our planet.
But new research has found that the task of spotting the most catastrophic flares might be a lot trickier than first thought.
A study of CMEs by scientists at the University of Reading in the UK has found they have different structures to what we previously thought.
They are more like clouds, which means they are more influenced by solar wind.
CMEs reach Earth when caught up in solar winds, making their movements much harder to predict than if they were the single bubble-like entities experts once thought they were.
The ejections are huge blasts of solar plasma and magnetic fields from the sun’s atmosphere that can reach Earth in one to three days.
A direct hit could have catastrophic consequences, as CMEs are capable of damaging satellites, destroying electronic devices and potentially exposing people at high altitudes — such as astronauts, aviation crew and passengers — to cancer-causing radiation.
Solar flares mess with the Earth’s magnetic field, sparking storms which are known to have brought down power supplies in the US.
They happen often, but predicting which ones will impact Earth and how severely is a massive challenge.
Professor Mathew Owens said: “Up until now, it has been assumed CMEs move like bubbles through space, and respond to forces as single objects.
“We have found they are more like an expanding dust cloud or sneeze, made up of individual plasma parcels all doing their own thing.

An eruption on April 16, 2012 was captured here by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory in the 304 Angstrom wavelength, which is typically coloured in red. Picture: NASASource:Supplied

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“We have found they are more like an expanding dust cloud or sneeze, made up of individual plasma parcels all doing their own thing.
“This means that trying to predict the shape and movement of CMEs as they pass through the solar wind becomes extremely difficult.
“Therefore if we want to protect ourselves from solar eruptions, we need to understand more about the solar wind.”
The new study, published in Nature Scientific Reports, looks in detail for the first time at how CMEs behave as they make their way through space, and how they interact with external forces like solar wind.
A previous study by University of Reading scientists found a shift in solar activity, expected to occur by the middle of the century, could make us more vulnerable to CMEs.
In 2011, the threat of space weather was added to the UK Government’s National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies.
The Civil Aviation Authority has highlighted solar flares as a risk to plane passengers and crew and NASA is researching ways improve the safety of astronauts and plane passengers and crew.
This article originally appeared on The Sun.