Although the Sun provides light and heat for life on Earth, its occasional "bad temper" (solar storms) may sometimes give us big headaches.

A solar storm occurs when billions of energetic electrically charged particles and electromagnetic radiation (such as X-ray) emanate from the Sun into space. If they are hurtling towards the Earth, disturbance of the Earth's magnetosphere may result, crippling our communication, power supply, satellite and navigational systems and even taking down our modern life as we know it.

To plan ahead, scientists have been studying the behaviour of the Sun. It is found that the Sun is more active when there are more sunspots, and thus solar storms are more likely to occur.

Just when we thought we had a good grasp of the "temper" of the Sun, nature always surprises us … (to be continued)