Solar storm could cause trillions of damage to Earth – Bill Jamieson

Ultima Thule shows how much we need the Sun’s warmth, but we might be a bit too close for comfort with an estimated 12 per cent chance of a major solar storm between 2012 and 2022, writes Bill Jamieson.

• The Scotsman

Chaos, risk, uncertainty: how these words have come to define our world.

But such definitions shrink before the chaos and uncertainty of the planetary sort.

The New Year opened with radio signals travelling some four billion miles from the New Horizons probe after its flyby of Ultima Thule in the rock-strewn extremities of the galaxy.

It is the most distant ever exploration of an…

• Solar storm could…