Imagine life on Earth with no power, with cell phones and other forms of electronic communications rendered useless.
Scientists released a warning recently that this kind of disruption of life on Earth is possible if the sun spews a "disastrous" super flare.
Researchers from the University of Warwick in England issued this warning after observing a similar super flare from binary star KIC9655129, a distant star in the Milky Way galaxy that shares similar traits with the sun.
Anne-Marie Broomhall, co-author of the Warwick study, said her team observed wave properties in KIC9655129 which are also produced by the sun.
"[This] supports the hypothesis that the sun is able to produce a potentially devastating super flare," Broomhall explained, as quoted by WND.com.
How exactly does a super flare happen? Huge amounts of magnetic energy build up in the sun's atmosphere and are suddenly released in a massive outburst of radiation, scientists say.
They estimate that a super flare can release energy with an unimaginable power of a billion one-megaton nuclear bombs.
Lead scientist Chloe Pugh from the University of Warwick explained that such a solar event can have bad effects on Earth, especially on telecommunications.
"If the Sun were to produce a super flare it would be disastrous for life on Earth; our GPS and radio communication systems could be severely disrupted and there could be large-scale power blackouts as a result of strong electrical currents being induced in power grids," Pugh explained, as quoted by The Independent.
The lead researcher nevertheless explained that such an event is very unlikely to happen soon.
"Fortunately the conditions needed for a super flare are extremely unlikely to occur on the Sun, based on previous observations of solar activity," Pugh said.
Nevertheless, the sun is still capable of spewing solar flares toward Earth, but to a lesser degree, especially now that it is going through a solar storm maximum called Cycle 24.
