Featured Image Credit: MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images/NASA/SDO
People are bracing for an ‘intense’ solar flare that’s coming to Earth and could cause chaos.
We are expecting to have the huge flare hit our planet later this week after an eruption occurred on the sun on Tuesday evening.
Solar flares are described by NASA as being powerful bursts of energy that have the ability to impact radio communications, electric power grids, navigation signals and cause risks to astronauts and spacecrafts.
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This flare has been categorized as an X-class, which is the most intense classification.
The largest flare from the sun in the last five years happened earlier this year in May, in an event that was classed as an X8.9 flare.
According to NASA, this week’s solar storm is a result of an X7.1 flare.
And it’s already reeking havoc - having caused a shortwave radio blackout across Hawaii.
Previous flares this year have resulted in visible aurora displays, including the Northern Lights, while disturbances to satellite communications and power grids being damaged are also a possibility.
With the incoming solar storm, it further proves that the sun has entered solar maximum, which is the period in its 11-year cycle when solar activity is at its most prominent and its magnetic field flips
Despite scientists predicting that this phase would take place in July 2025, activity on the sun has increased rapidly over the course of this year and has forced experts to reassess their predictions.
So far in 2024, 41 X-class solar flares have been shot out, which is more than the number of these in the last nine years, put together, according to spaceweather.com.
Usually, X-class solar flares only happen 10 times a year, but with solar maximum expected to last another year at the least, we can expect to see more of these powerful solar flares, CMEs and geomagnetic storms affecting Earth in the next year or so.
However, even though we are starting to see an increase in activity from the sun in recent months, this does not mean that it’s dangerous for humans.
NASA squashed any fears around the recent flare by taking to X, formerly Twitter, to clarify: “Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground.
“However — when intense enough — they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS & communications signals travel.”
