News & Current Events
Worldwide Outages Spark Chaos After Huge Solar Storm — And It Might Get Even Worse
Strong radio blackouts are occurring all over the world as a result of the sun’s greatest solar flare of the year.
A huge X2.7-class solar flare erupted shortly after 11:30 a.m. ET from a recently developed cold, dark zone known as AR4087.
The highest-power flares on the solar storm scale are X-class flares, which can interfere with communications, harm satellites, and even endanger Earth’s power systems.
Sunspots, which are cooler, darker regions of the Sun’s surface where strong magnetic activity accumulates, are the source of these outbursts.
It can send strong plasma and radiation bursts into space at the speed of light when that magnetic energy is abruptly released.
These high-energy waves have the potential to ionise the upper atmosphere if they are aimed towards Earth, causing radiation storms that disrupt systems that depend on technology, including high-frequency radio transmissions.
With an X2.7 rating, Tuesday’s flare was on the weaker end of the most hazardous category of solar flares, but it was still strong enough to affect wide areas of the earth.
As sunspot AR4087 rotates into direct alignment with Earth in the next several days, experts warn that further flares could be imminent, raising the possibility of new solar storms.
The flare quickly ionised the upper atmosphere by sending X-rays and intense UV radiation hurtling towards Earth at the speed of light.
In other words, the atmosphere became electrically charged as a result of electrons breaking away from molecules in the outermost layer due to this abrupt radiation spike.
Some radio operators in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East experienced communication blackouts as a result of this charge’s disruption of high-frequency radio communications.
Due to their location on Earth’s daylight side at the time of the solar flare, these areas were the only ones impacted.
As sunspot AR4087 rotates to face Earth directly, experts predict that we will see more solar flares through the end of next week.
Aurora chaser Vincent Ledvina posted on X early on Wednesday morning, saying, “This is getting intense, especially as this active region turns closer into view.”
He said that after the X-class flare, the sunspot released another energy burst, this time an M5.3-class solar flare.
“What does this [active region] have planned over the next days… we’ll have to wait and see,” Ledvina wrote.
Sunspot AR4087 released another solar flare, this one an M7.74, just before 7:20 a.m. ET on Wednesday.
A tabletop exercise conducted by members of national and local government agencies last May exposed significant gaps in America’s readiness for a powerful solar storm.
Participants in the two-day experiment were asked to imagine that the sun was hurling multiple huge coronal mass ejections (CME), which are bigger and more powerful than solar flares, towards Earth.
It takes days for these massive charged particle plumes to reach Earth. They can trigger geomagnetic storms, which are significant disturbances of the planet’s magnetic field and upper atmosphere, when they crash into the atmosphere.
In this case, Earth would experience technological anarchy due to the ensuing geomagnetic storm.
The participants soon discovered that they were unable to make prompt, wise decisions due to the severe limitations of space weather forecasting skills.
This exercise showed how forecasting methods and technology need to be improved so that the United States is ready to withstand any storm that the sun throws at it.
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