A team of researchers has proposed creating a space shield to protect planet Earth from devastating storms, as the sun unleashes, approximately every century, a supercharged storm, and if it struck the Earth today it could destroy every artificial satellite orbiting around it, disrupt power networks and the Internet, and expose astronauts to lethal doses of radiation.

A team of researchers called for the creation of a space shield, which they called “Stormwall,” to protect the planet from its worst effects, in an idea that experts say is “highly feasible.”

In recent years, planet Earth has been exposed to dozens of solar storms as the sun reaches the peak of its activity in its 11-year cycle. These storms are often caused by coronal mass ejections, which are huge clouds of plasma that are released after violent explosions on the surface of the Sun, and cause the appearance of aurora borealis.

According to the Live Science website, a superstorm, such as the famous Carrington event in 1859, is hundreds of times stronger than normal storms, and if it struck today it would destroy the space and terrestrial infrastructure on which the entire world depends.

The new study, published by the Space Weather journal, offers a proactive solution instead of relying solely on improving forecasts, as researchers propose launching 6 satellites the size of a bus into geosynchronous orbit at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, that is, much higher than the International Space Station and most satellites. There, this small swarm will wait until an “imminent large solar storm” is detected, and then it will empty huge containers of reactive gas such as barium, lithium, or sodium around the edge of the Earth’s magnetosphere, forming a massive wall of plasma that acts as a giant air cushion, reducing the severity of coronal mass ejections and diverting their path away from the planet.

The team’s simulations show that this plasma wall could reduce the intensity of a superstorm by more than half, and would have reduced the intensity of the geomagnetic disturbance resulting from the May 2024 storm by up to 84% if it had been present.

The experts inspired the project from a natural defense mechanism. During solar storms, the Earth’s magnetic shield temporarily weakens, but oxygen ions rise to the magnetosphere and accumulate on the side facing the sun, forming a bubble that protects the planet from radiation. (Erm News)