NASA: Powerful solar storm approaching Earth today
After a solar flare incident on the Sun, a massive solar storm is headed towards Earth, as per NASA. The US space agency reported on January 20 that a solar flare was observed near a sunspot named AR2929. Now a resultant solar storm is fast approaching Earth. The solar storm can affect satellites hit communication, even mobile phone connectivity and GPS. If strong enough, it can cause power grid failure resulting in blackouts. However, having said that, the storm has to be powerful enough to do that and this one is not of that high a level.
“Geomagnetic unrest is possible on Jan. 22-23-24 as a series of CMEs delivers glancing blows to Earth's magnetic field,” read a post on Spaceweather.com. The website has issued a warning that today and for the next couple of days, Earth may feel the impact from the solar storm.
The internet uses deep sea fiber optic cables. However, these are mostly immune to solar storms since they carry light and not electric current. But, these long haul cables use an accompanying conductor that connects repeaters in series along the length of these cables. However, a solar storm can impact these conductors and possibly knock them out. If they are damaged enough, they can take months to replace, says a research paper published by Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi of the University of California, Irvine and VMware Research. This also means that the Internet will be knocked out for a long period in many regions on the Earth. Sangeetha Abdu says that the world is totally unprepared for any such solar storm-caused Internet apocalypse. However, the proviso is that the solar storm has to be powerful enough to penetrate the protective magnetic shield that the Earth is enveloped in. Abdu has warned that the chances of
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