These are powerful solar eruptions that produce high amounts of cosmic rays in Earth's upper atmosphere, which in turn produce carbon-14, a radioactive isotope of carbon.

The Carrington Event of 1859 is the largest recorded account of a geomagnetic storm

Today, a geomagnetic storm of the same intensity as the Carrington Event would affect far more than telegraph wires and could be catastrophic.

With the ever-growing dependency on electricity and emerging technology, any disruption could lead to trillions of dollars of monetary loss ...

In the case of a solar storm, communications would be disrupted on a worldwide scale.

• Internet service providers could go down, which in turn would take out the ability of different systems to communicate with each other.
• Satellites in orbit around Earth could be ...

It's important to work now to minimize the disruptions from the next Carrington Event.

It's important to continue researching ways to protect electrical systems against the effects of geomagnetic storms, installing devices that can shield vulnerable equipment like transformers, and dev...