A latest study has discovered that a solar storm that stuck radar and radio communications at the time of the Cold War probably have resulted into a devastating military conflict.

The Air Force made an aircraft all set for war on May 23, 1967, thinking that the Soviet Union had jammed the country’s surveillance radars in polar areas. But at the last moment they got to know from military space weather forecasters about the solar storm's potential in interrupting the radar and radio communications. The new researcher suggested that the planes stayed on the ground and the US cancelled a probable nuclear weapon exchange with the Soviet Union.

In a fresh paper, accepted for publication in Space Weather, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, retired US Air Force officers, who were part of the forecasting and studying the storm collectively, have explained the event publicly first time ever.

The new study’s main author Delores Knipp, a space physicist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, said that the storm's potential effect on society was mainly unknown till the time such individuals joined hands and shared their stories.

She said that the storm was a classic example of the significance geoscience and space research holds in the US national security.

Knipp mentioned, “Had it not been for fact that we had invested very early on in solar and geomagnetic storm observations and forecasting, impact [of the storm] likely would have been much greater. This was lesson learned in how important it is to be prepared”.

In the late 1950’s, the US military started monitoring solar activity and space weather, the disturbances in magnetic field and upper atmosphere of our planet. A fresh branch of the Air Force's Air Weather Service (AWS) checked the sun on regular basis in the 1960s, for solar flares.