Earth struck by most powerful space storm in three years - space - 06 April 2010 - New Scientist
Can we stop and take a moment to thank the planet's molten iron core for generating the Van Allen radiation belts that keep this planet safe from solar radiation? Without them there'd be no life at all. Thanks, iron core! Thanks, Van Allen belts! You're the best planetary force field a guy could have.
The most powerful geomagnetic storm since December 2006 struck the Earth on Monday, a day earlier than expected.
On 3 April, the SOHO spacecraft spotted a cloud of charged particles called a coronal mass ejection (CME) shooting from the sun at 500 kilometres per second. This velocity suggested the front would reach Earth in roughly three days.
"It hit earlier and harder than forecast," says Doug Biesecker of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.
Fortunately, the storm was not intense enough to interfere strongly with power grids or satellite navigation, but it did trigger dazzling auroras in places like Iceland (pictured).