October 24, 2003
Solar storm
This could be interesting.
Set in motion by an eruption of gas on the sun, an enormous space storm—known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME—was headed towards earth Friday afternoon, and it could cause problems with satellites, cell phones, pagers, and other technological equipment. The storm has already interfered with high-frequency airline communications and power grids.Posted by Alan at October 24, 2003 04:35 PM"It's like seeing a hurricane in November rather than August, when you'd typically expect it," says Larry Combs, one of the Space Environment Center forecaster. "The peak of the cycle was in 2000, and here we are 3 and half years later with a dynamic sunspot region that you could put 10 earths inside."
Then, on Wednesday morning, at 3 am EDT, the larger of the two spots produced the CME, which is headed in the direction of earth, achieving speeds of 2 million miles per hour.
According to the NOAA, the sunspot already produced a major solar flare earlier in the week, causing a radio blackout on October 19 at 12:50 pm EDT. Today's CME could cause similar problems.
via PC Magazine
NOAA