If most of us realized how close the Earth came to disaster on July 23, 2012, we'd probably have made the day an international holiday of rejoicing.

We'd be celebrating a cataclysmic event called the "Impactor" not hitting the Earth.

The Impactor was an extreme solar storm that that nearly hit the planet on July 23, 2012. What made the Impactor terrifying was that it was the most powerful solar storm the world had encountered in more than 150 years.

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Daniel Baker from the University of Colorado said that if the Impactor had hit the planet, we'd still be picking up the pieces until now.

He said that if the eruption had occurred a week earlier, Earth would have been in the line of fire.

Analysts said that a direct hit from the Impactor would cause worldwide power blockouts, disabling everything that plugs into a wall socket.

In a study conducted by the National Academy of Science, the total economic of impact of the Impactor would have exceeded US$2 trillion, which is 20 times greater than the cost of the repairs for Hurricane Katrina.

They also said that repairs on damaged transformers caused by the solar storm would have taken years.

Other researchers said the geomagnetic storm created would be twice as bad as the March 1989 Quebec blackout.

Researchers are thankful because the solar storm happened to hit a nearby solar observatory, Stereo-A.

From this observatory, they gathered data regarding the solar storm that exceeded the geomagnetic storm that hit Carrington in the 19^th Century.