Earth and space are about to come into contact in a way that’s new to human history. To make preparations, authorities in Washington DC are holding a meeting: The Space Weather Enterprise Forum at the National Press Club on June 8th. “The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity. At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms. The intersection of these two issues is what we’re getting together to discuss.”

“The eruption hurled a bright coronal mass ejection into space. The expanding cloud could deliver a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field around April 15th. NOAA forecasters estimate a 35% chance of polar geomagnetic activity when the CME arrives.”

Every few decades, the sun experiences a particularly large storm that can release as much energy as 1 billion hydrogen bombs. Officials from Europe and the U.S. say an event like that could leave millions on Earth without electricity, running water and phone service.