For the past 24 hours, radio waves around the world have been flickering: The culprit is appearing in the sky!
The brightest celestial body in Earth's sky is "piercing" two large holes, continuously shooting fierce flares at us, and the continuous radio wave loss on May 19 is the "alarm siren".
According to Space, the widespread shortwave radio blackouts that occurred in many places on Earth on May 19 were caused by "cosmic flares", which are powerful energy rays from the Sun that shoot straight towards us and collide with the magnetosphere, causing geomagnetic storms (solar storms).
At least seven of the M-class flares that caused the phenomenon were attributed to AR3311 , a giant sunspot .
Two sunspots are slowly rotating towards Earth, possibly bombarding our planet with intense flares - (Photo: SDO/NASA).
Even more frightening, on May 19, it did not actually turn towards Earth, but the following days, which means many geomagnetic storms could massively attack the Earth throughout the weekend.
It is not alone, but is also accompanied by another giant sunspot named AR3310, responsible for the solar flare recorded by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on May 16.
The flare caused radio disruptions in many areas across the Americas hours later, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center.
All the radio blackouts that have occurred have been just "siren" , due to the "primary" effects of the flares that have not been fired directly at Earth, only slightly grazed.
But this weekend, Earthlings will have to be extra careful as these two guns are aimed straight at Earth.
Geomagnetic storms are not storms that you can see, but they affect human systems such as radio communication systems, navigation systems. because the Earth's magnetic field is disturbed when the energy from flares hits the magnetic fields of the magnetosphere.
A flare at the highest level of level X (the strongest) can completely knock out a large area of the power grid.
With the M-class flares expected to be emitted by this pair of sunspots, aviation, space and other radio-navigation related operations will have to be careful.
Geomagnetic storms can even cause migratory birds to lose their way and also caused 40 Space X satellites to be "thrown back" to Earth in February 2022 when they were accidentally launched right when a strong geomagnetic storm hit.
- Who invented radio?
- For the second time, science has found a source of mysterious radio waves
- Mysterious waves of radio waves outside the universe
- Discover mysterious radio waves 3 billion light years from Earth
- Why do Americans still believe in the ability of radio waves to be more mobile?
- Giant telescope captures signals from the universe
- Discover mysterious radio waves in the Milky Way
- What does the universe look like if you see radio waves?
- Scientists have found the location of the largest beam of radio waves ever discovered in the universe
- AI detects 72 radio signals from the universe
- Mysterious radio signals from the universe
- Aliens are trying to send messages to Earth?