The magnetic storm from the sun...

According to the university of California, Berkeley and Chinese researchers, a rapid succession of coronal mass ejections - the most intense eruptions on the sun - sent a pulse of magnetized plasma barreling into space and through earth's orbit. Had the eruption come nine days earlier, when the ignition spot on the solar surface was aimed at earth, it would have hit the planet, potentially wreaking havoc the electric grid, disabling satellites and GPS, and disrupting our increasingly electronic lives.