Debbie Murphy's List: Solar Storms

A solar storm is an event in which activity  on the Sun interferes with the Earth's magnetic field.  Because the Sun is so far away, many people believe that solar storms are not capable of  causing very much damage, but they can in fact be quite devastating. Research in  the early 2000s created a number of potential worst case scenarios which  illustrated the destructive power of solar  storms, including scenarios showing that powerful nations in the developed world  could be brought to their knees for a decade or more by a storm of large magnitude.