One of the strongest solar storms in years engulfed Earth early on Thursday, but scientists say the planet may have lucked out.
Hours after the storm arrived, officials said there were no reports of problems with power grids, satellites or other technologies that are often disrupted by solar storms.
However, that still can change as the storm shakes the planet’s magnetic field in ways that could disrupt technology, but also spread colorful Northern Lights. Early indications show that it is about 10 times stronger than the normal solar wind that hits Earth.
Photo: Reuters
The storm started with a massive solar flare on Tuesday evening and grew as it raced outward from the sun, expanding like a giant soap bubble, scientists said.
The storm struck about 11am GMT in a direction that causes the least amount of problems, said Joe Kunches, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center.
Initially, scientists figured the storm would be the worst since 2006, but now it seems only as bad as ones a few months ago, he said.
Forecasters can predict the speed a solar storm travels and its strength, but the north-south orientation is the wild card. And this time, Earth got dealt a good card with a northern orientation, which is “pretty benign,” Kunches said.
If it had been southern, that would have caused the most damaging technological disruption and biggest auroras.
“We’re not out of the woods,” Kunches said. “It was a good start. If I’m a power grid, I’m really happy so far.”
However, that storm orientation can and is changing, he said.
“It could flip-flop and we could end up with the strength of the storm still to come,” he said.
North American utilities so far have not reported any problems, said Kimberly Mielcarek, spokeswoman for the North American Electric Reliability Corp, a consortium of electricity grid operators.
A massive cloud of charged particles can disrupt utility grids, airline flights, satellite networks and GPS services, especially in northern areas.
The storm is part of the sun’s normal 11-year cycle, which is supposed to reach a peak next year. Solar storms don’t harm people, but they do disrupt technology. And during the last peak around 2002, experts learned that GPS was vulnerable to solar outbursts.
Because new technology has flourished since then, scientists could discover that some new systems are also at risk, said Jeffrey Hughes, director of the Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling at Boston University.
The region of the sun that erupted can still send more blasts our way, Kunches said.
Another set of active sunspots is ready to aim at Earth.
“This is a big sun spot group, particularly nasty,” NASA solar physicist David Hathaway said. “Things are really twisted up and mixed up. It keeps flaring.”
Storms like this start with sun spots, Hathaway said.
Then comes an initial solar flare of subatomic particles that resemble a filament coming out of the sun. That part from this storm hit Earth only minutes after the initial burst, bringing radio and radiation disturbances.
After that comes the coronal mass ejection, which looks like a growing bubble and takes a few days to reach Earth.
For North America, the good part of the solar storm — the one that creates more noticeable auroras or Northern Lights — peaked on Thursday evening.
Auroras could dip as far south as the Great Lakes states or lower, Kunches said, but a full moon would make them harder to see.
Still, the potential for problems is widespread. Solar storms have three ways they can disrupt technology on Earth: with magnetic, radio and radiation emissions.
This is an unusual situation, when all three types of solar storm disruptions are likely to be strong, Kunches said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not