While this scene looks like the result of shaking up a festive snow globe, it is in fact the disturbing effect of one of the most powerful solar storms ever recorded. The ESA/NASA SOHO captured this image while monitoring the Sun’s stormy behaviour in 2003 – its detectors being completely swamped by high-energy protons that were accelerated to nearly the speed of light (300 000 km/s) in the X17 flare on 28 October of that year. See http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/12/Impact_of_a_solar_storm_28_October_2003
