In a remarkable incident, scientists these days fear that the sun will suddenly wake up after a relative calm in the universe, which may cause problems on Earth, according to Al-Arabiya.
Solar storms that rage on our star during its active period can create bursts of electromagnetic energy that affect everything from the power grid to GPS signals.
These so-called solar extremes occur about every 11 years, but they weren’t a big problem in the past.
However, experts fear that our reliance on electricity may mean that we are more vulnerable to its effects this time around.
A big ball of plasma
The sun is a large ball of plasma, heated at its centre.
Plasma consists of charged particles that boil towards the surface, cool, and then return to the core again.
This motion is called convection, and it creates strong magnetic fields at the poles and smaller local magnetic fields on the surface of the sun, according to Insider.
In turn, Matthew Owens, a professor of astrophysics at the Matthew Owens Institute at the University of Reading, said that every 11 years or so the sun becomes unstable, which means that its magnetic fields become so frequent that the magnetic north and south poles suddenly flip, leading to a huge polar distance.
This instability wreaks havoc on the magnetic fields on the Sun’s surface, which become more active.
Solar storms can also bring down planes, as Earth’s atmosphere glows as it interacts with solar radiation.
The sun is likely to dump energy during its maximum intensity.
ionosphere layer
This energy can affect communication by messing with the ionosphere, a layer of charged particles in the upper atmosphere, causing problems for air travel.
It is noteworthy that a 2023 study that looked at flight records over a period of 22 years reported that planes were 21% more likely to be delayed by at least 30 minutes when the sun was very active.
The rays can also alter the magnetic fields in the ionosphere, which can affect the GPS signals that must pass through that layer to reach Earth.
While radio signals sent from Earth also need to bounce off the ionosphere to travel from one point to another, this is less efficient in severe space weather.
As the geomagnetic storm messes with the magnetic charge of the ionosphere, it creates currents in the ionosphere, where those currents in the upper atmosphere interact with molecules in the Earth.
The interaction between these particles creates powerful electric currents that can engulf infrastructure on Earth.
And this change can provoke some strange phenomena. In 1972, American military pilots who were flying south of the port of Haiphong in North Vietnam witnessed the explosion of 20 sea mines in the water without any apparent reason.
A 2018 study of space weather at the time concluded that the cause was a massive solar storm, and if currents flooded the electrical grid, they could blow out transformers.
It is also possible that the sun would also release radioactive material called solar particles that could be dangerous to astronauts.
Humans on Earth are usually shielded from this radiation, as most of it bounces off the ionosphere and the rest is absorbed by the atmosphere.
While the International Space Station is still under the protection of the ionosphere.
#terrifying #storm #hit #sun. #effect #earth