NASA’s new study has revealed that the Earth's life-sustaining atmosphere would have been severely affected by the Sun's flares if it did not have magnetosphere.

Magnetosphere acts like a natural magnetic bubble which helps protect a planet's atmosphere. In its absence, a planet's atmosphere is intensely vulnerable to eruptions from the Sun.

The magnetosphere on Earth has prevented it from becoming like Venus by deflecting some of the impact of the solar eruptions.

Venus is an inhospitable planet, which is 10 times hotter than the Earth. It possesses such a thick atmosphere that the longest any spacecraft had survived on its surface was for only two hours.

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs), larger eruptions of solar material occur at times and can disrupt the atmosphere around a planet.

Glyn Collinson, first author on the paper from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland said, "What if the Earth did not have that protective magnetosphere? Is a magnetosphere a pre-requisite for a planet to support life?”

Collinson's work began when Venus Express of The European Space Agency's (ESA) sent data after arriving at Venus in 2006 and carried out an eight-year mission. The Sun ejected a small, slow-moving puff of solar material on December 19, 2006.

This slow-moving CME was powerful enough to rip away dramatic amounts of oxygen out of Venus' atmosphere for four days.

The authors of the study noted that apart from knowing the effects of lack of a magnetosphere on Venus, it will help them understand more about the habitability of other planets they spot outside our solar system. Several spacecrafts observe a CME leaving the sun near the Earth.