Earth would only get a 30 minute warning about devastating solar flare

If a solar flare was heading to Earth, it turns out we wouldn’t have much time to worry about it.

In fact, new findings have shown that if a flare capable of impacting life on our planet actually be heading towards us, we’d only receive a 30-minute warning.

A new NASA study has shown that harmful solar storms could cause outages in power and cut the internet and we’d only have a short time to prepare for them once we knew they were happening.

NASA has been developing AI systems in order to forecast such events.

Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

Its artificial intelligence powered system is called DAGGER, and it’s being used to protect Earth from fallout as a result of solar storms.

iStock

The system studies geomagnetic disruptions and solar wind in order to predict the external forces that could impact life on our planet.

Research is being conducted by researchers at the Frontier Development Lab. Members of NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey and the US Department of Energy are all involved in the work, which uses the AI method of “deep learning” to observe behaviours and patterns in outer space.

Vishal Upendran of the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics in India is Lead author on the research.

Upendran said in a statement: “With this AI, it is now possible to make rapid and accurate global predictions and inform decisions in the event of a solar storm, thereby minimizing – or even preventing – devastation to modern society.”

So, while AI is proving to be one of the most controversial subjects of 2023, this research is helping to prove it can be a force for good in the scientific community.

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.