India, Jan. 23 -- A powerful stream of solar energy recently dumped into the Earth, lighting up the skies with brilliant auroras and causing short-lived hiccups for some satellite operations. Scientists are describing it as a rare, intense radiation storm in space, highlighting again the way solar activity can directly interfere with our technology, air travel and communications on this planet.

A solar radiation storm occurs when the Sun expels a stream of high-energy, electrically charged particles mainly protons and electrons during flares or coronal mass ejections. Those particles can zip through space at nearly the speed of light and can reach Earth within hours. Scientists classify the storm on an S-scale, ranging from S1 to S5. Thi...