NASA's DAGGER could provide early warning of the upcoming powerful solar storm.

Image Credit: NASA There is already enough unrest on this planet; we don't need additional issues from the sun. We are at the mercy of this merciless star because, unfortunately, we can't yet destroy it. However, NASA may soon be able to alert us when one of its deadly flares is going to cause havoc with our terrestrial systems. The work of NASA includes understanding and forecasting space weather on a large scale. No one can hear you scream, "Wow, how about this radiation! " because there is no air up there. As a result, we depend on a constellation of satellites to find and deliver this crucial information to us. Even NASA can't find anything positive to say about the solar wind, which they refer to as "an unceasing stream of material from the sun," as one of these measurements! Normally, our magnetosphere absorbs or dissipates this stream, but during a solar storm, it may be so intense that it overwhelms the local safeguards. Image Credit: Nature When this occurs, electronics may malfunction because the charged particles may flip bits or interfere with volatile memory, such as RAM and solid state storage. According to NASA, not even telegraph stations were safe from the Carrington Event in 1859, the largest solar storm on record. These stellar events can't be prevented, but if we knew they were coming, we might be able to better prepare for them. But typically, by the time we find out, they've already arrived in essence. But how can we forecast such sporadic and unpredictable events? NASA and the US are working together on a project. This problem has been investigated by the Geological Survey and the Department of Energy at the Frontier Development Lab, and the solution is machine learning, as you might expect. The team gathered information on solar flares from a variety of satellites that monitor the sun as well as from ground stations that keep an eye out for geomagnetic disturbances (also known as perturbations), such as those that have an impact on technology. They call the resulting system DAGGER: Deep leArninG Geomagnetic Prediction. The deep learning model they developed identified patterns in how the former leads to the latter. It is a stretch, yes. But it appears to function. Image Credit: NASA The team discovered that DAGGER was able to quickly and precisely forecast the effects of geomagnetic storms that struck Earth in 2011 and 2015. This avoids the drawbacks of earlier methods while combining their advantages. As stated by NASA: AI has been used in previous prediction models to generate local geomagnetic forecasts for particular locations on Earth. Other models that didn't incorporate AI have offered general predictions that weren't particularly accurate. DAGGER is the first to generate frequently updated predictions that are prompt and accurate for sites all over the world by combining the quick analysis of AI with actual measurements from space and across Earth. Although it might take some time before you receive a solar alert on your phone warning you to pull over because your car might break down (this won't actually happen...probably), it could make a significant difference once we are aware of vulnerable infrastructure that might suddenly go down. Better than no warning is a few minutes' notice! Read More: 10 BEST WATERPROOF TENTS FOR CAMPING IN RAIN This issue of the journal Space Weather contains the paper outlining the DAGGER model, which is open source by the way.