Earth braces for biggest space storm in five years"Huge explosions on the Sun's surface are sparking the biggest radiation and geomagnetic storm that Earth has experienced in five years, according to space weather experts.The storm, expected to hit Earth later today and last for around 24 hours, may disrupt power grids, GPS systems and satellites, and has already forced some airlines to change their routes around the polar regions.The event is will likely to give night-time viewers in parts of central Asia a prime look at the aurora borealis, or northern lights, tonight."Space weather has gotten very interesting over the past 24 hours," said Joseph Kunches, a space weather scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).The fuss began late on Sunday at an active region on the Sun known as 1429, with a big solar flare that was associated with a burst of solar wind and plasma known as a coronal mass ejection that hurtled towards Earth at some 6.4 million kilometres per hour.Another solar flare and CME followed yesterday, setting off a strong geomagnetic and solar radiation storm, both at level three on a five-step scale.NASA said the second flare - classified in the potent X class - was one of the largest of this cycle known as the solar minimum, which began in early 2007, and fell in just behind a slightly stronger one which erupted in August."
4 comments:
pleased I am not flying today
Yair - bad day for any form of navigation - Must turn the sat-Navs off in the vehicles if we are likely to get EMT barrage.
OlderSon works at a TV station and a few years ago there was a huge solar flare that shut down the whole station.... huge panic to get things up and running again.
Remains to be seen what this one does do - I slept through 2 hours of the afternoon! lol!
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