On July 11, a eruption the sun caught the eye personnel from space observatories in different parts of the planet. This phenomenon, which normally occurs in the atmosphere of the “royal star”, consists of a sudden burst of electromagnetic radiation and energy particles originating in a small region of the solar atmosphere.
In this case, it came from a region of the sun in which your the magnetic field is particularly strong and complexmaking these gusts travel At the speed of light.
However, these phenomena do not always occur spontaneously, but are rather the result of a much larger process such as that experienced by the Floor right now.
Inside the Sun, the same magnetic field that caused the explosion observed on July 11 continued to spin and launch massive amounts of solar plasma into space. This process, known as coronal mass ejection (CME, for its acronym in English), moves at a slower speed than the ejecta and that is precisely what happened all last week.
SPECTACULAR FILAMENT ERUPTION: A filament extending halfway across the solar disk has become unstable and burst away from the Sun. Two things to note: (1) A section of it twists (magnetic energy is released). (2) After the event, two glowing ribbons form – a two-ribbon flare! pic.twitter.com/d3GN6S5Dpy
—Keith Strong (@drkstrong) July 16, 2022
On July 15, one of them was thrown from the Sun to the Earth and, despite its slower speed, the predictions of the Space Weather Prediction Center NOAA (Space Weather Prediction Center) indicate that it will reach Earth on Thursday.
How could the solar storm affect telecommunications?
The physics of these phenomena (solar wind, sunspots, solar flares and coronal mass ejections) has not yet been studied in detail, but evidence suggests that are primarily magnetic in nature, occurring approximately every 11 years.
This is when the Sun experiences its most active magnetic periods, called solar maximawhen the frequency of these events is particularly high.
and justly now the Sun is approaching the peak of its current cyclewhich should reach its maximum during 2024since since last fall (2021) there has been a increasing amount of these phenomena in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.
Nail coronal mass ejection can affect the Earth in different ways: even if is usually accompanied by polar aurora (usually visible at high latitudes), its interaction with the Earth’s magnetosphere can cause compression and modification of its structure, generator new magnetic fields more complexin addition to the existing earth’s magnetic field.
This phenomenon is called geomagnetic storm and its effects can be felt in the form of interruptions in radio and satellite communicationsas well as cuts of energy in the most extreme cases.
The good news of this prediction made by the NOAA is that the estimates suggest that this the geomagnetic storm is at its lowest level (1)which could possibly cause fluctuations in the electrical network and have little impact on earth satellite operations, as well as also affecting migrating animals. Despite all that, does not represent a danger to human health.
More serious past events
Despite the slight intensity expected for this Thursday’s storm, still it is good to take a look at history and keep in mind more serious past events.
The so-called Carrington Event caused telegraph networks to collapse across much of the Northern Hemisphere.
the year 1859 is remembered as the period that gave birth to event of Carrington: this year, a great geomagnetic storm of the same origin caused the collapse of telegraph networks in Europe and North America. Moreover, it set receivers on fire and caused several electrocutions in a world that was not as dependent on telecommunications as it is today.