Two years back, on July 23, 2012 Sun's two catastrophic coronal mass ejections could have hit our Earth, had it occurred just a week earlier, as per the U.S. space agency NASA.

Daniel Baker, an atmospheric and space physics professor from the University of Colorado, states that the solar storm hit the STEREO-A spacecraft which was designed to calculate the specifications of such an occurrence.

Pete Riley, a physicist, opines that there rests a 12 percent probability of a violent solar storm hitting the planet in the next ten years.

The event begins with an explosion of the sun's surface which exudes extreme radiation and X-rays towards our planet at the very fast speed equivalent to the speed of light. These are followed by active particles which can cause damage to the electronics in satellites.

Finally, the release of a cloud that weighs more than a billion tons consists of magnetized plasma and takes about a day to traverse the distance separating the Earth and the sun. The Earth is able to deflect the cloud but a hit can have catastrophic effect.

According to the National Academy of Sciences the solar eruption could have caused massive destruction that would take several decades to repair.

It further estimates that the eruption could have caused damages worth approximately two trillion dollars. It could have badly damaged services such as power systems, dams, communication systems and also nuclear reactors.