Giant sunspot AR3190 sparks solar storm fears; Can cause blackouts, warns NASA

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Even as Earth narrowly escaped a solar storm attack on Tuesday, fresh concerns from a gigantic sunspot have emerged. The NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has been observing the sunspot AR3190, the huge sunspot that can even be seen through unaided eyes, and it appears that this solar region is setting itself up for an explosion. If it does explode, it can cause a dangerous solar storm event on Earth with a chance of X-class solar flares targeting the Earth. This can result in shortwave radio blackouts and even disruption in GPS and other wireless communications in various regions on our planet.

This development was highlighted by the NASA SDO which has been tasked with observing the Sun and any solar activities that take place. It noticed that the sunspot, which was relatively stable so far, has suddenly started becoming unstable. SpaceWeather.com reported, “The sunspot's primary dark core is actually a huge pole of negative (-) magnetism closely surrounded by multiple islands of positive (+) polarity. This is exactly how solar flares get started”. It should be noted that this difference in polarity causes an event known as magnetic reconnection which can set off massive explosions.

Luckily, the sunspot is turning away from the Earth and as such we will not suffer a direct hit from this explosion. However, considering the gigantic size of the sunspot, a broad spray of an X-class solar flare will still hit our planet with massive amounts of X-rays and extreme UV radiation. This will not only cause a shortwave radio blackouts on any landmass it strikes, there can be other consequences as well.

It is being said that the radiation can disrupt GPS services as well as other wireless communication systems including mobile