A powerful one solar flare (also called a flare) will have important repercussions on planet Earth on Friday 4 October with repercussions also the following day: a geomagnetic storm which experts estimate to be an event that can reach up to class G3 on a scale of one to five, therefore of moderate strength but as has happened several times in the past.
What happened
This was said by the experts at the Noaa Space Weather Prediction Center who recounted what happened on the surface of the Sun on October 1st with a strong eruption, indicated in the value X7.1which took place in a region of sunspots near the center of the Earth-facing solar disk. “This was in fact the second flare (eruption, ed.) strongest solar cycle of the current solar cycle so far! An exciting jump in solar activity after a relatively quiet period with multiple regions of powerful sunspots currently on the solar disk,” the experts wrote. The X7.1 solar flare produced a halo coronal mass ejection with an Earth-directed component.
What is coronal mass
When experts talk about coronal mass they are referring toexpulsion of material (almost always made up of plasma) from the solar corona, i.e. the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere. “There is no doubt that this cloud will overtake the Earth, but its intensity is a bit of a question mark,” add NOAA scientists. In these cases, in fact, the stronger the expulsion, the greater the possibility of having direct consequences on our planet. The classification of geomagnetic storms goes from G1 to G5: on this occasion there was already a brief blackout at some radio stations but the situation returned to normal in a short time.
The consequences on Earth
In any case, in their statement, NOAA tells us that we will be glancingly hit, which is why it is reasonable to think that there should be no significant problems with telecommunications and GPS systems which at most could have light and temporary disturbances, no
blackout on the horizon. Different story for an event loved by millions of people, namely the Northern Lights, which could be seen at latitudes further south than normal but even in this case everything is still to be verified.
The X7.1 solar flare from 1 October produced a faint asymmetrical halo CME that has a high likelihood to arrive at Earth on Friday, 4 October. More information and live data on https://t.co/XHATH0OOfT pic.twitter.com/VC3fwDl7EN
— SpaceWeatherLive (@_SpaceWeather_) October 3, 2024