The biggest space weather storm in five years is hurtling towardEarth, threatening to disrupt power grids, GPS systems, satellites and airline flights, experts say.
The brunt of the storm is expected to strike early Thursday and last through Friday, possibly garbling some of Earthlings’ most prized gadgets but also giving viewers in parts of Central Asia a prime look at the aurora borealis, or northern lights, when darkness falls on Thursday.
“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), on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, NASA warned of a “severe” storm event that would impact both the Earth and Mars as well as some key space agency satellites.
The fuss began late 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 thrust toward the Earth at some four million miles per hour (6.4 million kilometers per hour).
A pair of solar flares and a CME followed overnight Tuesday-Wednesday, setting off a strong geomagnetic and solar radiation storm registering at level three on a five-step scale.
NASA said the first of the two flares on March 6-7 — classified in the potent X class and facing directly at the Earth — was the biggest this year and one of the largest of this cycle known as the solar minimum, which began in early 2007.
In fact, it was second only to a stronger one that erupted in August, and the leading edge of the CME it sparked is expected to reach Earth at 0525 GMT on March 8, plus or minus seven hours.
“Such a CME could result in a severe geomagnetic storm, causing aurora at low latitudes, with possible disruption to high frequency radio communication, global positioning systems (GPS) and power grids,” NASA said.
The solar flares alone caused brief high frequency radio blackouts that have now passed, according to NOAA.
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