new delhi a team of indian and japanese scientists using the grapes3 telescope at ooty tamil nadu found how a giant cloud of superhot gases and radiation ejected from the sun battered earths magnetic shield and even cracked it for some time allowing deadly cosmic rays to get in this event compressed the earths magnetic shield from 11 to 4 times the radius of earth it triggered a severe geomagnetic storm that generated aurora borealis and radio signal blackouts in many high latitude countriesthe plasma cloud was travelling at a mind boggling speed of 25 million kilometers per hour when it struck our planet after travelling for forty hours from the sun the cracking of the magnetic shield under this gigantic attack led to a twohour long cosmic ray shower on earthgrapes3 is a muon telescope located at cosmic ray laboratory in ooty run by the tata institute of fundamental research tifr the event was recorded by it on 22 june 2015 a paper detailing the research findings was recently published in the journal physical review lettersscientists from india included those from tifr as well as bose institute kolkata and indian institute of science education and research pune japanese collaborators were from osaka city university chubu university and aichi institute of technologyearths magnetosphere extends over a radius of a million kilometers which acts as the first line of defence shielding us from the continuous flow of solar and galactic cosmic rays thus protecting life on our planet from these high intensity energetic radiations numerical simulations performed by the grapes3 collaboration on this event indicate that the earths magnetic shield temporarily cracked due to the occurrence of magnetic reconnection allowing the lower energy galactic cosmic ray particles to enter our atmosphere earths magnetic field bent these particles about 180 degree from the dayside to the nightside of the earth where it was detected as a burst by the grapes3 muon telescope around midnight on 22 june 2015 the data was analyzed and interpreted through extensive simulation over several weeks by using the 1280core computing farm that was built inhouse by the grapes3 team of physicists and engineers at the cosmic ray laboratory in ootysolar storms can cause major disruption to human civilization by crippling large electrical power grids global positioning systems gps satellite operations and communicationsthe grapes3 muon telescope the largest and most sensitive cosmic ray monitor operating on earth is playing a very significant role in the study of such events this recent finding has generated widespread excitement in the international scientific community as well as electronic and print media