Rare powerful solar storm could hit and impact power grids

While the Sun might look pretty chill from the massive distance we're seeing it at, its surface is actually almost always a roiling mess of radiation and fire.

Every so often, a solar storm happens that's strong enough to potentially impact Earth, too, with geomagnetic waves pulsing out towards us and potentially playing havoc with communications tech.

Storms severe enough to warrant warnings are really rare, but yesterday a severe geomagnetic storm watch was put out by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). That's reportedly the first time it's done so since 2005.

It's not just a red herring, either - the storm this time around might see the highest dose of radiation hit our planet for some 50 years, and could be strong enough to affect power supplies and even knock out the internet in places.

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There will be a peak of around two hours later today when the storm might disrupt things like GPS signal or power grids, before things subside to a lower level that will be sustained throughout most of the weekend.

Amazingly, this could also cause a far more widespread appearance of the aurora effect than usual, meaning Northern Lights-style lights could be visible across much of the Northern Hemisphere if we're lucky.

The flares that started all of this actually erupted on the Sun earlier this week, on Wednesday, sparking the warnings that are coming into effect now - they've been pushing out radiation ever since.

The NOAA's statement is pretty dramatic, too: "Space weather forecasters have issued a Severe (G4) Geomagnetic Storm Watch for the evening of Friday, May 10. Additional solar eruptions could cause geomagnetic storm conditions to persist through the weekend."

Despite this all sounding pretty scary, the risk of internet outages is relatively remote.

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And in the event of an outage it's a safe assumption that things would get back up and running nice and quickly.

Still, it's all a pretty good reminder of the scale of the solar system, and how much events some 150 million kilometers from us, on the Sun's surface, can affect life on our planet.

That's underlined even further if you start to look into the long-term future of the Sun. It might take epic aeons to unfold, but Earth's eventual fate is to be swallowed by the star, along with most of the rest of the solar system, as it slowly but surely expands over billions of years - so it's no wonder that it's already showing its power now.