On Friday, several thousand Airbus planes had to be grounded to make sure that their onboard computers would not suffer from unusual but potentially very serious interference. The source of the interference was not even of this Earth – the French company was concerned about the effect of an increase in solar radiation on the onboard software. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

The Sun is constantly spewing charged particles: the solar wind. There are also particles coming from beyond the Solar System known as cosmic rays. These particles are raining on us every moment of every day. The Sun occasionally launches more energetic plasma into space, and those powerful solar storms can play havoc with electronics as well as

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