Scientists float bizarre solution to protect us from solar storms shooting a giant airbag into space

It’s sunblock.Researchers have proposed an unorthodox way to shield our planet from the constant barrage of solar storms — launching a giant satellite “airbag” into space to mitigate their worst effects.This interstellar sunscreen proposal, dubbed the StormWall, was detailed in a study in the journal Space Weather.“If you built it, if it was deployed, it would help all people on the planet,” declared the study’s head author, Brian Walsh, a plasma physicist and space weather expert at Boston University, in a statement.They devised the unorthodox plan in response to the recent spike in geomagnetic storms that coincided with the solar maximum — the most active phase of the sun’s 11-year solar cycle.These turbulent phenomena occur when explosions on the sun’s surface, known as solar flares, unleash powerful interstellar plasma beams called coronal mass ejections (CMEs).While these events can cause resplendent auroras to adorn our skies — such as the brilliant Northern Lights show last month — they can also cause radio blackouts and power grid failures.Every hundred years or so, the sun discharges a CME so powerful that it could shut down the internet, knock out every satellite orbiting Earth and bombard astronauts with fatal doses of radiation, according to Livescience.To prevent this, the researchers proposed shooting six bus-sized satellites into orbit approximately 22,500 miles (36,000 kilometers) above Earth.

In the event of an inbound solar storm, this sunblocking sextet would strafe the edge of Earth’s magnetosphere with sodium, barium, calcium and other reactive gases from canisters, creating a massive plasma barricade that would block and redirect the particles.Study co-author Daniel Welling, a space physicist at the University of Michigan, analogized the Storm Wall to installing “an airbag in the magnetosphere,” Science magazine reported.This proposal might sound ripped from science fiction.However, simulations showed that thi...