The U.S. Space Weather Forecast Center said a G3 geomagnetic storm clock is now in force after what scientists call a “cannibal coronal mass ejection (CME)” launched into Earth. A CME cannibal occurs when a second larger explosion follows an initial one and ends up wiping the material in front of it. This results in “entangled magnetic fields and compressed plasma that can trigger strong geomagnetic storms”, according to SpaceWeather.com, which means that the saddles could be seen closer to the equator than usual. “Views are possible as far as southern Scotland and Northern Ireland,” according to the Met Office. Image: Solar flares are capable of affecting electronics on Earth Solar activity has been observed to rise and fall naturally every 11 years, although it is not exactly like the clock, and astronomers believe we are now entering a period of increased solar activity that could peak in 2025. A new family of sunspots, discovered on the surface of our star in 2020, unleashed the largest solar flare that scientists have seen since 2017. Earlier this year, SpaceX confirmed that a geomagnetic storm had destroyed most of the Starlink satellites it had attempted to orbit during a launch. The storm, triggered by solar activity, caused the Earth’s atmosphere to heat up and expand. The denser atmosphere at the initial orbital altitudes for the satellites caused the atmospheric drag to rise up to 50% higher than SpaceX had seen in previous launches, the company said, meaning the satellites ended up falling vertically back to Earth. to burn on re-entry. “The impact on technology from a G3 storm remains generally small,” said the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which monitors space weather. Fortunately, astronomers do not expect the flare to cause much disturbance, according to Carrington Event, believed to be the largest solar storm ever recorded, which struck Earth in 1859. The Carrington incident left a lighthouse visible in the sky, even at latitudes much closer to the equator, and has been described in modern reports as even brighter than the light of a full moon. It caused telegraph systems to fail across Europe and North America, and a similar storm today could cause trillions of dollars in damage worldwide.
