Someday an unlucky outburst from our sun could strike Earth and fry most of our electronics—and we’ve already had some too-close-for-comfort near misses

A growing body of evidence also hints that much more rarely the sun blows out a truly apocalyptic storm. Data from ancient tree rings and ice cores suggest that in C.E. 774 a solar storm hit our planet that was so powerful that it significantly altered our atmospheric chemistry. Similar data from even deeper back in time are best explained by another epochal solar storm occurring in 7176 B.C.E.; this may have been the most powerful eruption from the sun to strike Earth in the past 10,000 years.