India, April 28 -- According to researchers at University of California, Berkeley, a rapid succession of coronal mass ejections-the most intense eruptions on the sun sent a pulse of magnetized plasma barreling into space and through earth's orbit. The massive magnetic storm had a speed of 3,000 km per second enough to circle earth five times in one minute. The eruption on the sun took place on July 22, 2012. Had the eruption come nine days earlier, when the ignition spot on the solar surface was aimed exactly at earth, it would have hit the planet. In a paper appearing on March 18, 2014 in the journal Nature Communications, researchers say that the solar burst tore through earth's orbit but fortunately, earth and the other planets were on...