How to recover damaged Microsoft Office Word, Excel or PowerPoint files

If you have corupted Microsoft Office Word, Excel or PowerPoint file, the usual file recovery software won't help you much. That means you need a specialized software that won't damage the files.

• Restore damaged or corrupt MS Word documents

To restore MS Word files you need special tool. There is an tool that is easy to use that can repair files like that.

You can recover .doc and .docx files with Stellar Phoenix Word Repair, it will recover your file without making changes in the text, fonts, links, images...

There are 3 options for repair: Simple repair, Advance repair and raw recovery. 

Simple repair brings back .doc and .docx files with small corruption, Advance repair fixs seriously corrupted .doc files and Raw recovery is for heavily corrupted files (it's in RAW text or machine readable format)

STEPS:

1. Select the corrupted Word file by clicking on 'Add File' icon on the 'File' ribbon.              
              
2. Click on the 'Save' icon in the 'File' ribbon. For advanced option, select 'Advance Repair'.

• Restore damaged or corrupt MS Excel documents

For .xls and .xlsx documents you can use Stellar Phoenix Excel Repair. This tools saves you lots of time. Follow the steps and recover the file without changing the tables, cells charts, images...

The steps to repair MS Excel files are the same like the steps for Word documents.

After the scan and repair you will get log report for further analysis.

• Restore damaged or corrupt MS PowerPoint documents

We use PowerPoint to make different kind of presentations for work, school or other activities. Many times all the hard work on presentation can be gone because the files gets corrupted. Use Stellar Phoenix PowerPoint repair and save your work.

With this tools you can repair .ppt, .pptx and .pptm files. Use it and I'm sure you won't be sorry about that.

The steps are the sames as the steps for Word and Excel documents.

If your file is seriously damaged use the option for RAW recovery. This tool repairs the macro-enabled PowerPoint presentations, too.

Recomend this tool to all your friends who have problems with corrupted MS Office files. 

Feel free to post your comments about this post.

source: FOSSBYTES

KickassTorrents is back!

For those who haven't heard or don't know about KickassTorrents(shortened KAT), I will write a small explanation.
KAT was a website that provided a directory for torent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using BitTorrent protocol. It was founded in 2008. In November 2014 KAT was the most visited BitTorrent directory in the world, but this it was shut down on 20 July 2016, when the domain was seized by the US goverment.


Millions of people were using KAT and when it was shut down, they have lost their favourite torrent site. The site had lots of active admins, moderators and members.
Many fake proxies were made, which helped to other websites to gain glory. They claimed that they are new KickassTorrents and they looked just like the old website.
After the shutdown, several KAT-crew members grouped to build a community website. The name of the site was KAT.cr, but they didn't offer any torrent links.

These days KAT-crew launched new torrent site KATcr.co that looks identical to the previous site. The website is back with clean user database. Soon the website will be filled with fresh content.

"The majority of our origina; Staff, Admins and Moderation team joined us after Kat.cr went down - which is something we're very proud of. This shows the loyalty, dediction and real love for KAT that we all share," said the KATcr.

According to the KATcr crew, the site was rebuilt and the safe elements were kept, to keep the members safe.

"In order to keep our members safe we chose to rebuild and keep only safe elements. Despite the fact that a rebuild took longer, the safety of our community comes first," they said.

Because of the huge amount of users who are trying to open KATcr.co, you might not load it or you will, but very slowly.

Will the new site regain the old glory, tell us your opinions in the comments below.

source: FOSSBYTES and  torrentfreak

Turn on visual desktop notifications in Windows 7,Windows 8 and Windows 10

Did you know that there are options in Windows 7,8 and 10 operating system, to turn on visual notifications on the desktop when sound is played?

Windows operating system diplays different sounds for different kind of notifications, like sound notification for messages on your account on social networks, sound for errors and many different things.
If you are not in front of your computer you might not hear the notification and you can easily be late for something important. 

You can turn on the visual notifications in the Ease of access center in Windows.

How to turn on these settings?

 1. Open the start menu and search for Ease of access center
 2. Open Ease of access center

 3. Find and click on Use text or visual alternatives for sounds

 

 4. Now, tick the checkbox for Turn on visual notifications for sounds

 5. Then select Flash Desktop(it's under Choose visual warning)

 6. To save the settings click Apply

Test the flash desktop notification by activating the sticky keys. You can do that by pressing the Shift key five times in a row and you will see a flash on your screen. The flash screen will aprear for all other system sounds.

To reset this option, untick the Turn on visual notifications for sounds 

If you don't like the flash notifications, you can enable text captions for sounds.To

enable this, tick the checkbox for Turn on text captions for spoken dialog.

Post your opinions in the comments bellow.

source: FOSSBYTES

Windows tools that will help you to lock your keyboard and mouse

Many times when we move away from our computer someone else might search our stuff or some small kids could press some commands and make problems on our computer.

I had the experience with small kids. Once they were visiting me with their parents while I was in front of my computer. I moved away and when I came back, they've deleted some of the files, moved their order and more stuff. I was angry, but I did not tell them anything. After that I searched for tools to lock my keyboard and mouse. I found some usefull ones. Now my computer will be safe, at least they can do is to break my mouse or keyboard.

Here are 3 of them:

1. KeyboardLock

You don't have to install this app. Just download it, open the downloaded package and then double click on the .exe file. 
After you open it, press run. A window with password will pop up. The password by default is cake. You can change it in anything you want. After you type the password you want press start, type the password again and the keyboard and mouse are locked.
You can move the cursor in locked mode, but you can't select or do anything.
If you want to unlock them, type the same password correctly again and the mouse and keyboard will be unlocked.

Note that keyboardLock allows the Ctrl+Alt+Delete command, so someone who knows that can acess Windows Task manager and swith to open windows.


2. Child Lock

An icon in the systray is created by Child Lock at start-up, which has four buttons displayed in the main window. If you want to automatically lock the application, click Auto Lock, if it hasn’t been active in the last 10 minutes. Double-click the tray icon of Child Lock and click Cancel in the main window, if you wish to cancel this task.

Click Lock to block the keyboard and mouse immediately or press Shift+Alt+End. While they are locked, any key press or mouse click will turn the mouse pointer into the prohibited sign.

Click Allow Only to allow only a few keys to be pressed: Space, PageUp and PageDown, or Click Block Win Ctrl to block only control keys, i.e. Ctrl, Alt and Win key. This mode starts a few seconds after clicking its button to give you time to choose a window to limit the buttons inside it. The mouse pointer cannot be moved in this mode.

You can activate the Shift+Alt+Home key combination to unlock the keyboard and mouse. In the main app window, click Options to review the hotkeys for locking and unlocking, if you forget them. It’s not possible to change them.

Note that Child Lock allows the Ctrl+Alt+Delete command, so someone who knows that can acess Windows Task manager and swith to open windows.

3. BlueLife KeyFreeze

Since BlueLife KeyFreeze isn’t enclosed in a setup kit, you can double-click the .exe file from the downloaded package to run the program. It gets integrated into the systray.

Right-click the tray icon to lock the keyboard and mouse, and choose Lock All Keys or press Ctrl + Alt + F. There’s a small interruption before locking, during which you can cancel the task.

You can lock only the keyboard or the mouse (right-click the tray icon and choose Lock Keyboard or Lock Mouse).

Press Ctrl + Alt + F to unlock the keyboard and mouse. If you want to make changes to this combination (Ctrl + Alt + any letter or number), right-click the tray icon, go to Options, click the menu next to Hotkey for lock/unlock: and select the preferred combo. You can also block mouse movement (clear the Allow mouse movement box) or Hide mouse pointer (tick this box). Once you’re done, click Apply Options to commit alterations.

Note that BlueLife KeyFreeze also allows the Ctrl+Alt+Delete command.

Note: This can't stop the others to press the power button and switch off your computer and then log in again to acces your files.

Tell us about your experiences in the comments below.

source: TECHWORM

After Galaxy Note 7 explosions, now Samsung's washing machines exploded

One of the best smartphone makers, Samsung, is having a very bad time. We heard about a phone that exploded in a car and the car started to burn. Another one exploded while it was charging and many other cases with the same problem.

After all those incidents with Galaxy Note 7 phones that exploded because of their battery, now Samsung's washing machines in the U.S. exploded.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has issued a warning to owners in regards to certain top-loading Samsung washing machines after receiving few complaints about the machines exploding.

More than a month after the federal class-action lawsuit was filed by the customers claiming their machines exploded during use, the warning was finally released on Thursday.

In a statement on their website, CPSC said it is “actively and cooperatively working with Samsung to address safety issues related to certain top-load washing machines made between March 2011 and April 2016.”

While the lawsuit did not specify which models are potentially dangerous, it alleged that there were at least 11.

“It was the loudest sound. It sounded like a bomb went off in my ear,” said Melissa Thaxton, one of the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit. “There were wires, nuts, the cover actually was laying on the floor. I just remember covering my head and leaning towards my son and just screaming this scream that I didn’t even know I could scream.”

The explosions made big damages to the surroundings around them. Glass and other metal parts from the washing machines were being shot across the garages and rooms.

In a statement released by Samsung, it said, “We are in active discussions with the CPSC to address potential safety issues related to certain top-load washing machines manufactured between March 2011 and April 2016. In rare cases, affected units may experience abnormal vibrations that could pose a risk of personal injury or property damage when washing bedding, bulky or water-resistant items."

Samsung is recommending that consumers with affected models use the lower speed delicate cycle when washing bedding, bulky or water-resistant materials. There have been no reported incidents when using this cycle. It is important to note that Samsung customers have completed hundreds of millions of loads without incident since 2011.

With accidents like these Samsung is loosing it's market value. Last month they lost more than $26 billion.

source: TECHWORM

What exactly is deja vu?

Deja vu is a phenomenon that everyone of us have experienced, that creepy feeling when you enter a room in a new situation and you tell yourself:

"I've been here before. Here, everything is familiar to me".

It turns out that we can provoke forms of deja vu of subjects in experiments. Because of that there is a theory that tells us that deja vu simply cause fragments of memories that we've already stored somewhere in the brain, and they can be awaked with entering a new environment that is similar on something that we've already experienced.

Because of that we don't have to call on parallel universes, we don't have to call multiverse to explain the phenomenon of déjà vu.

Again, there is another question:

Would it be ever possible on any scale to turn between different universes?

And the answer is actually unclear.

Physicists believe, for example, that somewhere there really is a multiverse that exists even in our living room.

We are waves, vibration waves given from function. These waves vibrate, then divided into portions over time.


You can see more in the video below.

Watch videos on YouTube without using internet with the new app YouTube Go

Everyone uses YouTube-the most famous app for music, videos and films. With the new app YouTube Go you can download and watch videos with slow internet speed.

This is very usefull for the users with slow internet speed and also for all others.

This app was created most because of the very slow internet speed in India. Many people in India use YouTube to watch videos and listen music, but when they tap on the play button the videos doesn't want to load because they have 2G internet.

That's the main reason why YouTube created this new app.

In 2014, YouTube launched the app YouTube Offline, few months after that they made the new Smart Offline.

With Smart Offline you can watch the video that you want with tapping on the offline icon at any time of the day. You can find your videos in the "Saved Tab" under your account.

YouTube Go allows the users to save videos for offline viewing, giving options over quality and file size so it's clear how much data a download will use. The users of this app can use it for local sharing with other users nearby without using any data. YouTube Go build upon the Smart Offline feature that YouTube launched first in India, this year.

Indian users can sing up now to test YouTube Go, but we still don't know when the app will be launched in the country or anywhere else in the world.

source: YouTube Go

6 Sci-fi technologies you didn't know that already exist

Most of the science fiction we can see in the films, read in the books, see on the internet, but most of the things that were science fiction in the movies now are reality.


There are some good films that show about AI and for now that's sci-fi, but in the next 10 years or less that could be reality.

For example, the film Chappie is about scientist that make code for robots so they are able to feel, think, learn and do the same things like humans. He installs the code into a police robot that was thrown in the trash. The robot was able to learn, talk, thing and feel.

Another good film is Transcendence. It's also about scientist that got shot by a criminal group. The bullet contained radioactive metals and he wasn't able to live for a long. His wife and his friend, tried to copy him on a computer. After they transferred his consciousness on the computer he expanded on the internet. After long years of work, he created particles that regenerate and that are controled by him. he cleaned all the water, air, regenerated all the woods, but the people thought that he is a threat for the world and they shut down the internet.


1. Star trek comunicator => mobile phone

Early Sci-Fi flicks and tv shows of the often featured actors using some sort of devices to wirelessly talk to each other over long distances. For instance, the Communicator from Star Trek. We already use these communication devices and call them mobile phones. Yes, the future tech of the past has become a necessity for the common people now. And it is available as cellular phones. A popular name is a smartphone.

2. Fingerprint and eye scanners => biometrics

Remember those movies featuring secret locations of security agencies which could only be accessed using fingerprint recognition or by scanning the face of a person.

Other than fingers, there were eye scanners. Steven Spielberg’s Minority report showed Tom Cruise replacing his eyes to hide his real identity. He also kept his original eye so that he could get past the eye scanner system. But that’s not possible in the real world even if you manage to remove your eyes or fingers. This is because modern eye scanners can detect whether the eye is alive or dead.

3. Batmobile => Autonomus cars

There was a Batmobile in the 1960s Batman tv series. Batman used a remote control to call it to pick him up. The 2002 Tom Cruise movie Minority Report also featured a self-driving car which was custom designed by Lexus. In reality, the car was a computer-controlled vehicle which also had manual driving options. Now, we have the Google Self-driving cars and the Tesla Model S with the autopilot feature.



4. Food Replicator => 3D printer

Remember wow the Jetson's machines threw food at the press of a button. And now, we have 3D printers which can be used to make houses, bridges, prosthetic limbs, etc. We can expect a food making 3D printer in the coming years.

Barcelona-based Natural Machines is working on a 3D printer that can throw delicious dishes at the push of a button. Known as Foodini, the 3D food printer is based on an open capsule model in which the user has to put ingredients inside the capsule and place it inside Foodini. It’ll figure out the rest.

5. Rosie - The robot maid => Robots

Another Jetsons tech was Rosie, the robot maid. Self-sufficient robots have been visualized in movies since the early 1900s. Now the robots are real and they have human characteristics. Thanks to the development of AI that these robots can interact almost like normal humans. But it’s a long road for them to understand human emotions. Movies like Ex Machina are a significant depiction of the advancement in robotics and AI.

6. The transformers

Everyone knows about the famous autobots from the Transformers movie series. Most of us have watched it. Until now the transformers were unreal, but a Turkish company named Letvision had developed its own transformers known as Letrons.

source: FOSSBYTES

100 million dollar search for alien life by Zuckerberg, Hawking and Milner

On the internet, on TV, in different books we can read lots of stories about aliens. Some of them claim that there are aliens somewhere in the space, but some of them doesn't agree with that.

There are stories about pictures from aliens in caves drawn by the cave mans.

In the hunt for making contact with alien life Mark Zuckerberg, Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner are joining their forces.

They will be listening to signals from the planet Proxima B that is 4 light yeras far from the Earth.

It is thought that there are similar conditions for life on Proxima B, like the conditions on Earth.

The $100 million (£76 million) project dubbed as “Breakthrough Listen” will use the world’s most powerful telescopes to listen to sounds from potential extra-terrestrial life on Proxima B. The costly scientific mission is being funded by the above world’s richest and intelligent trio.

Last month, astronomers found clear evidence that our nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is the sun to another Earth-like world.

“It came only a few months after Stephen Hawking and I, with Mark Zuckerberg’s support, launched our Breakthrough Starshot project, which aims to launch a tiny spacecraft to Alpha Centauri within a generation,” Mr Milner told the Daily Mail.

“At the time, we hoped there was a planet in the Centauri system, but we didn’t know. Now we have a definite target. That makes the mission feel more tangible.”

Thousands of new planets have been discovered before, but unlike the others, scientists say Proxima B is believed to be the closest to our solar system. But for now the scientists aren't able to reach there.

Professor Hawking always been certain alien life is out there. He says he is backing the project as he believes that it’s better for us to find them before they find us.

Even though adding we should be cautious of reaching out to extra-terrestrial life if we find it, he said: “Gazing at the stars I always imagined there was someone up there looking back. Hawking says during a film, titled ‘Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places’.

“As I grow older I am more convinced than ever that we are not alone.”

This should stop us from looking, Milner says.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the existential questions of life and the universe,” he said.

“It is fundamental to understanding our place in the big scheme of things. You can’t know who you are without having others to compare yourself to.”

“They could well be right. But they could also be wrong.

“Either way the answer would be incredible. We humans are curious beings who like to know the truth. So, why not look?,” he added.

Using the Parkes Observatory in Australia, the Breakthrough Listen team will begin to look for radio emissions that vary from the natural background noise early next month.

The same observatory was used to receive live televised pictures of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.

“It is difficult to predict how long the search will take, but we know that all the conditions necessary for life to arise on Earth are ubiquitous in the universe,” Andrew Siemion, Director of Berkeley SETI (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research Center told the Daily Mail.

The team hopes to avoid false alarm similar signals to the ‘alien’ signals that were picked up by the RATAN-600 radio telescope in Zelenchukskaya, Russia, but they say this could be complex than it sounds.

Andrew Siemion, Director of Berkeley Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence Research Centre, said:
“Terrestrial technology is a challenging problem.

“Our notion of what types of emission are produced by technology is informed by our own technology…our own technology presents a significant interfering background.”

Using the Green Bank Radio Telescope in West Virginia and Lick Observatory”s Automated Planet Finder in California, the Breakthrough Listen team has already collected data on other star systems.

Breakthrough Listen can collect data over a 10-year period from a network of the world’s most powerful radio and optical telescopes to produce huge, full-sky signal monitoring.

Search capacity is 50 times more sensitive, covers 10 times more of the sky, 5 times more of the radio spectrum, and at speeds 100 times faster.

What would Milner do if we did hear signals from an alien civilisation?

“I will take a bottle of champagne out of the fridge and start thinking about the message back,” he says.

Tell us your opinion about this post in the comments below.

source: TECHWORM

5 reasons that make Google Allo better than WhatsApp

Many of you use WhatsApp. Even if you don't use it, you must have heard about it.
WhatsApp is the most popular instant messeging app with about 1 billion active users per month.
Google has made a new instant messaging app Google Allo. This new app can take the place of WhatsApp. 
Here are 5 reasons why Google Allo is better than WhatsApp:

1. Google Assistant

The search giant’s biggest play is Google Assistant which announced at the Google I/O. Assistant is included in Google Allo as a preview version. Unlike WhatsApp, you can search people, places, food joints, etc. inside your instant messaging app.

WhatsApp’s daddy Facebook is working to enable alerts for various purposes like flight timings and bank notifications. This intention was revealed when WhatsApp announced that they will be sharing your contact number with Facebook.

The Assistant is directly aimed to compete with other virtual assistants like Siri and Cortana. But the Google Assistant has a lot to learn before it could challenge the biggies. Google has plans to put Google Assistant in place of Google Now in its Android OS.

2. Smart Reply

The smart reply feature analyzes your conversations and then suggests reply texts accordingly. This comes handy when you don’t want to type much for instance while you’re driving. Although, I won’t recommend you to do that. The smart reply feature can also analyze images and make a reply suggestion about them.

3. Send Free SMS

You can message your friends who have a WhatsaApp account. But what if you want to contact someone who doesn’t have the WhatsApp installed on their device. You won’t be able to send the message. But you can do so in Google Allo. Your contacts who don’t have the Allo app installed can receive texts as SMS. And it will cost nothing to you or the recipient.

4. Incognito Mode

News has been floating around that Google will not be sticking to their earlier decision of not keeping user conversation details on its servers permanently. Earlier, Google said it would be beneficial to users’ privacy if the data is stored temporarily. With Allo coming into existence, it seems Google doesn’t care about the aforementioned privacy drama. Now, the company gives the reason that the conversation would be used to fuel their Smart Reply feature and make it more efficient and useful.

At least, Google Allo has the advantage of the “Incognito Mode”. Using incognito mode in Google Allo would disable Google from storing any of your messages on its servers, in fact, reading them at all. Also, the messages would disappear from the recipient’s device after the specified time limit.

5. Whisper/Shout, Emoticons, and fresh Stickers

Google Allo has got some amazing formatting features which you’ll love and one of them is Whisper/Shout. Press and hold the send button to change the size of the text and emoticons using the slider. The app also has some great emoticons and fresh sticker sets out of the box. On the other hand, WhatsApp also has some cool text formatting features which most people don’t know.

Tell us about your experiences with these apps in the comments.

source: FOSSBYTES

How Mark Zuckerberg Founded Facebook - Real Story

On the internet we can find different stories about how facebook was created. But only one of them is true. Here in this post you'll find out how facebook was created.
Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed by Mathias Döpfnerm, and he told to Döpfnerm how he was inspired to create Facebook.

The very first scenes of The Social Network shows a child-faced version of Mark Zuckerberg involved in a heated conversation with his girlfriend and in the following minutes, he is shown posting harsh comments about her. The movie – an adaptation of the book “The Accidental Billionaire” – portrayed how Facebook came into existence, inspired by a photo matching tool built by some drunk Harvard guy who had his first business card titled “I’m CEO, bitch!”.  Zuckerberg says "That photo matching thing was just a prank". The real story is different.

At Harvard, Zuckerberg created a tool called Coursematch which was built for gathering user comments on various pictures that belonged to his art history class. “For the final class — called the “Rome of Augustus” — there were all theses pieces of art in the class and they were going to show you a handful and you would need to write an essay about the historical significance of that piece of art.” – Zuckerberg told Mathias Döpfner, CEO at Axel Springer. “I hadn’t paid much attention in the class because I was programming other things so when it came time for the final I was like oh I am screwed, I don’t know any of this stuff.”

The program allowed students to enlist what classes they were taking and form study groups. This helped them make better decisions based on what classes the other students were taking – “So as a study tool I built a little service that showed you at random one of the pieces of art and let you enter what you thought was significant from an art history perspective. So I sent it out to the email list for the class and said hey I have a study tool, and everyone just filled in what is significant about all the pieces of art and it ended up being this great social study tool.” After that, he did the famous FaceMash photo comparison tool which made him popular overnight.

All such tools were the stepping stones of his Facebook journey. It took him only two weeks to come up with the initial version of Facebook, a simple web page that looked as if all the graphic effects were scrapped out. He created Facebook because he wanted to “fill in” the gap between people’s lives. “There was no tool where you could go and learn about other people. I didn’t know how to build that so instead I started building little tools,” he said.

It was called ‘TheFacebook’, and at that time, he never actually gave a thought that he would be the one who would upscale a college level project like this into a billion dollar company envisioned to go far beyond a social networking website. “And I didn’t even think it might be us. It was not like, oh I hope we can turn this into something big. In my mind, there was no way this is going to be us. It was going to be someone else we are just college students. When I look back on the last twelve years, what has been the most surprising it’s that no one else did it. And I ask myself, why no one else did it,” he said.

In Berlin the Facebook CEO-Zuckerberg was present with his wife Pricilla Chan to receive the Axel Springer Award. The interview with the fourth ruchest man in the Forbes list of Rich People in Tech happened there. In the Interview, Zuckerberg discussed his views on Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence. Few months ago, we saw a picture of Mark Zuckerberg walking beside people in a hall and no one even turned an eye because they were wearing VR headsets. Facebook works in that field too.

Read the full conversation here.

source: FOSSBYTES

Our modern technology could be wiped out by a massive solar storm

In nowadays most of us can't imagine our lives without technology. Especially without the satellites that we need for communications, internet, TV...

Just imagine how would the world look like if most of the electronic devices that we have are useless.

The biggest danger for the satellites are the solar storms.

The latest example came in 2005, when X-rays from a solar flare disrupted satellite-to-ground communication and the GPS system for about 10 minutes — threatening satellite-guided air, sea, and land travel.

But none of those storms come close to the scale of the 1859 monster, known as the Carrington Event.

In 1859, before all that monitoring equipment was put in place, an astronomer spotted the flare before the storm reached Earth.

At 11:18 a.m. on 1st of September that year, the English astronomer Richard Carrington stood in his private observatory recording sunspots on an image of the sun projected through his telescope onto a small screen.

"Two patches of intensely bright and white light broke out," he wrote in his report, "Description of a Singular Appearance seen in the Sun," for the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

"My first impression was that by some chance a ray of light had penetrated a hole in the screen attached to the object-glass, by which the general image is thrown into shade, for the brilliancy was fully equal to that of direct sunlight," wrote Richard.

If a Carrington Event happened today, the world would likely have to deal with the simultaneous loss of GPS, cellphone reception, and much of the power grid. The global aircraft fleet might have to coordinate an unprecedented mass grounding without satellite guidance. Unguarded electronic infrastructure could fail outright.

"Humans in space would be in peril, too," NASA wrote. "Spacewalking astronauts might have only minutes after the first flash of light to find shelter from energetic solar particles following close on the heels of those initial photons. Their spacecraft would probably have adequate shielding; the key would be getting inside in time."

The best available estimates suggest a modern Carrington Event wouldcost humanity $1 trillion to $2 trillion in the first year and take another four to 10 years to achieve full recovery. A 2007 NASA estimate found that the damage to the satellite fleet would cost between $30 billion and $70 billion.

Fortunately, Carrington Event-level storms seem pretty rare, occurring perhaps once in 500 years. But we have no reliable way of predicting when the next one could happen.

source: Business Insider