How a major solar storm could knock out GPS and power grids

Solar storms send charged particles toward Earth that can disrupt GPS navigation, military and emergency radios, and the electrical grid, an expert says. Andrew Gerrard of the New Jersey Institute of Technology says most storms are a minor nuisance, but a Carrington-level event could take a decade to recover from. A 1989 storm knocked out Quebec’s power grid, and in 2012 a storm on the scale of the historic 1859 Carrington Event missed Earth by nine days.