A solar flare disrupted high frequency radio communications for more than an hour Wednesday, Sept.10. Even though communications were interrupted, more importantly, the flares do not present any danger.
“The coronal mass ejection (CME) from sunspot AR1258 consisting of charged particles travelling towards earth has since been downgraded following a reduction in speed of the cloud from 3750 km/sec to 1400 km/sec,” experts said.
However, “NOAA predicts an 80 percent chance of geomagnetic storms at the poles as the particles interact with the earth’s magnetic field.”
Tonight (Friday, Sept. 12) the solar flares will generate the solar storm will trigger a magnificent auroral display and the northern lights will also be visible.
Experts at NASA noted a solar flare that took place on July 23 was powerful enough to eliminate all power on our planet. Luckily the CME wasn’t aimed towards earth and this disruption did not occur.
Physicist Pete Riley, who published a paper titled “On the probability of occurrence of extreme space weather events,” calculates the odds of a solar storm strong enough to disrupt our lives in the next 10 years is 12 percent.
