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 this cosmic buffer can significantly reduce a storm’s intensity, effectively preventing trillions dollars in damage.

To demonstrate the project’s efficacy, the team conducted simulations on how the StormWall would have fared against the May 2024 solar storm, in which a salvo of CMEs bombarded the Earth, causing the strongest geomagnetic fiasco in over 20 years.

They found that it could curb the geomagnetic fallout by as much as 84%.

“When you apply some really serious physics to it, it does work,” Walsh declared. “People have always thought, ‘space is huge, the sun is massive, we just have to sit here and take whatever it gives us.’ But what we found is that we can impact it.”

Best of all, the amount of gas required to halve a storm’s intensity clocks in at just one-millionth the weight of your standard CME, meaning this “scheme punches far above its weight,” the scientists said.

The researchers propose deploying this spacey sunshield soon as it’s only a matter of time before the next “big one.”

“It’s like people in a village who see a river flooding — maybe they can predict when that will happen, but probably what’s even better is if they could build a storm wall,” said Walsh while discussing the purpose of this prophylactic measure. “That’s what we’re proposing here.”

Of course, there are a few caveats to bringing this space weather defense system to life. One of the top concerns exorbitant expense of deploying the StormWall satellites — which would likely be among the heaviest spacecraft ever launched — into space.

While they’ve yet to calculate the cost, researchers predict that it could set us back billions of dollars. Not to mention that once the satellites discharge their gaseous payload, they’ll need to be replaced, compounding the expense.

However, the team believes that the juice would be worth the squeeze given that a centennial superstorm could cause up to $3.4 trillion in damage.

“If I knew that a 100-year disturbance was coming and it would knock out power grids,” said David Sibeck, chief of heliophysics at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “I definitely would want this.”