Question: What's the most dangerous phenomenon known to have happened in space?

Emily Walls answered on 1 Apr 2026:

Space weather can be quite dangerous and has impacted Earth significantly before. There was a geomagnetic storm in 1859 called the ‘Carrington event’. It produced strong aurora that was reported globally and caused sparking and even fires in telegraph stations – what they used for telecommunications back in the day. The geomagnetic storm was most likely the result of a coronal mass ejection (CME) from the Sun colliding with Earth’s magnetosphere.