Solar Storm Bombards Earth’s Magnetic Field
Tuesday, January 24th, 2012Jan. 24, 2012
A massive outburst of highly energized material from the sun was expected to pummel Earth on Tuesday morning, January 24, announced the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This solar tidal wave, called a coronal mass ejection (CME), originated in the strongest solar storm observed on the sun since 2005. According to the SWPC, the coronal mass ejection was expected to “deliver a strong glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field … as it sails mostly north of the planet.” CME are huge balls of plasma, a form of matter composed of electrically charged particles.
The storm began erupting at 8:42 a.m. (Eastern time) on Thursday, January 19. On Sunday, January 22, satellites monitoring the storm detected the flash of a solar flare and registered the eruption of a CME. The SWPC estimated that the CME was traveling toward Earth at almost 1,400 miles (2,253 kilometers) per second. Authorities warned that the magnetic storm caused by the CME could disrupt radio and satellite communications, including GPS signals, and electric power transmission. Aviation authorities planned to reroute planes that normally fly over the polar regions, where the magnetic field that protects Earth from solar storms is the weakest. The charged particles could also produce displays of the northern lights much farther south than normal. The CME was not expected to affect human health on the surface.
Coronal mass ejections release enough energy to supply all of Earth’s commercial energy needs for more than 12,000 years. A CME that blasted Earth on Sept. 1, 1859, caused fires to break out along telegraph transmission lines in Europe and the United States and produced fantastic auroral displays as far south as Cuba. According to astronomers and other scientists who study space weather, a storm of the same magnitude hitting Earth today could cause massive power outages, cripple satellites, and damage electronic communications so severely that the costs would easily run into the tens of billions of dollars. Scientists also agree that it is merely a matter of time before another large solar storm hits Earth.
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