Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – The sun is said to wake up from sleep. The indication is that a geomagnetic storm that is part of the solar cycle was reported to have hit Earth last week. This activity causes space weather phenomena that have an impact on the appearance of the aurora and damage to satellites.
A large geomagnetic storm hit Earth on November 3-4 last year from a series of solar flares the previous two days.
The explosion was reported to have originated from sunspots, which are magnetic storms on the Sun’s surface. The great star’s spots and activity are part of a roughly 11-year cycle and last week’s storm was symptomatic of the Sun’s stage in that cycle.
“The last few years of activity [Matahari] very little, as was the case during the solar minimum phase, but is now accelerating fairly rapidly to the next solar maximum cycle predicted to occur in 2025,” said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Center for Outer Space Weather Prediction (SWPC) program coordinator Bill Murtagh told Space, quoted Tuesday (9/11/2021).
“We’re seeing an increase in activity associated with this cyclical uptick. It’s kind of an awakening phase.”
The geomagnetic storms originate from a series of coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. This is material that the Sun sometimes spews out.
Murtagh explained that the CME is a cloud of one billion tons of plasma gas with a magnetic field. So the Sun will emit a magnet into space and travel to Earth.
But the Earth also has its own magnetic field. “The two magnets will come together and it will create a geomagnetic storm,” he said.
In some cases, CME can grow along the way. The Space page says the geomagnetic storm that occurred last week was a series of explosions that merged as the next CME moved faster than before.
“The first CME worked its way through 93 million miles and almost paved the way for another CME to come behind it. Sometimes we use the term ‘cannibalizing’ the front,” explains Murtagh.
Meanwhile geomagnetic storms can disrupt critical infrastructure. Starting from the power grid, navigation satellites, and aircraft radio communications in remote areas. It is the job of Murtagh and his colleagues to monitor space weather to warn infrastructure operators of possible problems.
For example, last week’s storm, the SWPC will notify all power grid operators in the United States (US) and Canada. Although the risk of anything going wrong is low.
“They want to know that it’s happening so they know to be prepared,” he said.
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