Today's Violent Solar Flares

The sun is hyperactive, on May 6 it expelled a class X 4.5 flare, class X are the most powerful, the radiation from this flare caused a deep shortwave blackout throughout the Indian Ocean and on May 8 it expelled another level X, it is not normal for it to expel such powerful flares in such a short time interval, the images you are seeing are from NASA's solar dynamics observatory All this activity is due to the fact that the sun is in the period of Solar Maximum which is estimated to last until the month of October of this year, it is the most active part of a cycle that lasts about 11 years, this is cycle number 25 since As records are kept, during the maximum there are more sunspots, more powerful flares, and more cloud-like coronal mass ejections charged particles that, when colliding with the Earth's magnetic field, end up causing solar storms.

And this week we have an example of a giant sunspot, it is the one called AR 3664, it has grown to 200,000 km in diameter, it is as large as the Sunspot of the Carrington event of 1859, to illustrate this similarity we have this example that compares the sketch by English astronomer Richard Carrington with a photo of the Spot AR 3664 taken by NASA on May 9.

The giant sunspot of the Carrington event caused a powerful solar storm between September 1 and 2, 1859, auroras were seen in latitudes such as Spain or Cuba, which is not normal, it also caused overloads in electrical networks and fires in stations. telegraph was 1859, electronic civilization was in its beginnings, everything was very primitive, now things have changed and we depend very much on electronic technology completely.

We depend on the electrical networks of internet satellites and even intercontinental flights can be affected by solar storms, not to mention their possible effects on health, a controversial topic that is still under investigation, this current giant sunspot. AR3664 is pointed at Earth and there are now at least three storm clouds or coronal mass ejections heading our way.

The NOA, which is the oceanic and atmospheric administration of the United States, has issued a severe solar storm warning for May 11 that can reach level G4 on a scale that ends at G5, according to the NOA this can affect failures In power systems voltage corrections may be required and false alarms may be triggered in some protective devices, intermittent problems may also occur in satellite navigation and low frequency radio navigation.

HF radio may be intermittent and auroras will be seen at low latitudes, there will also be problems with this G3 storm level in spacecraft operations, satellite drag in low Earth orbit may increase and corrections may need to be made due to orientation problems, this is due, explained in a simple way, to the fact that solar storms cause the atmosphere to swell and the atmospheric gases to reach greater heights, so they can end up rubbing against the satellites and causing this friction that they lose speed and that they can even fall, something that Elon Musk knows very well, as he lost 40 satellites of the Starlink constellation in 2022 due to a solar storm and they are not the only ones.

In 2023, the Maps space satellite website said that solar storms had destroyed at least 200 satellites in the Starlink constellation and that is many millions of dollars in losses, which is why it is so important to monitor the sun because we increasingly depend on space satellites and of all electronic technology something that is very sensitive to solar storms.

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