Space hurricanes could destroy life as we know it with NASA on alert over Earth 'dent'

Extreme weather can be devastating, whether it's floods washing away people's homes or earthquakes causing mass destruction.

But while we associate these natural disasters with life here on Earth, it turns out there's some pretty turbulent weather happening outside our planet's atmosphere too, in the form of space hurricanes.

And yep, they're just as terrifying as they sound.

They aren't too dissimilar from the hurricanes we experience on Earth, but instead of wind and rain making up the swirls of energy, it's swirling streams of energetic plasma.

Space hurricanes are believed to form when solar wind interacts with Earth's magnetic field in a very specific way, particularly when the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) is facing north.

This interaction funnels energy and plasma into Earth’s upper atmosphere, creating vortex-like structures, resulting in a spiral storm of plasma, with plasma 'rain' flowing down along magnetic field lines into the polar regions.

Space hurricanes operate similarly to terrestrial hurricanes (Getty Stock Images)

But now to the bit we all really want to know: are these extra-terrestrial events any kind of danger to us?

Well, in the most direct sense, they are not, because they occur hundreds of kilometres above Earth and the atmosphere acts as a protective shield to prevent such events from reaching the surface... but here's where it gets a little bit sticky.

Space hurricanes can have an impact on important infrastructure systems used on Earth that are based in space, like satellites, GPS and communications, as well as spacecrafts, which can be impacted by increased radiation and plasma density causing electrical charging.

The South Atlantic Anomaly on planet Earth (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)

And going back to that protective shield we talked about, we could be in big trouble after scientists discovered a dent in the Earth's magnetic field.

Known as the South Atlantic Anomaly or SAA, the 'dent' is so big it spans all the way from southwest Africa to South America. You don't even need to be good at geography to understand that is bloomin' huge.

NASA has been keeping a close eye on the magnetic issue and the impacts it could have on Earth ever since it was discovered back in 1958 and in recent years it has presented a 'big headache for satellites', according to the American space agency.

So how does it all work? The magnetic field is essentially a protective bubble around the planet itself.

The 'dent' in the magnetic field is a real problem and one that must be watched at all times (Getty Stock Image)

It is this bubble that stops the Sun from vaporising life, allowing biological things to flourish by repelling and trapping charged particles from the star.

Unfortunately, there is an issue with this over South America and the southern Atlantic Ocean in the SAA. Here, these particles dip closer to the surface than normal.

The SAA has been presenting a number of changing issues for scientists, from potential spacecraft malfunction to high-energy proton spikes, but the fear is that as the dent continues to split and deepen, we're left significantly more vulnerable to extra-terrestrial events - like space hurricanes.