RSSSolar Flare Disrupts Communication, Navigation
By Ed Oswald | Published September 8, 2005, 2:48 PM
One of the largest solar flares ever recorded was observed Wednesday afternoon by forecasters at the NOAA Space Environment Center, and scientists are predicting more significant flares could occur over the next two weeks.
Spacecraft operations, electric power, high-frequency communications, and low-frequency navigation systems could all experience disruptions. The flare came from the same region, called Sunspot 798, that caused the northern lights to be visible as far south as Colorado in the northern hemisphere, and the southern lights as far north as Australia and New Zealand in July.
"This event created a complete blackout of high frequency communications on the day lit side of Earth, which included the entire U.S. and basically anywhere the sun was shining at this time," said Larry Combs, a forecaster at the Space Environment Center.
Combs said that emergency service communication along the Gulf Coast supporting the Katrina relief effort might have experienced some degradation for up to several hours following the solar flare.
The flare was measured at X-17, which rates as a severe disruption to radio communications. According to the NOAA Space Weather Scale, severe disruptions cause high-frequency radio blackouts, as well as disruptions to low frequency and satellite navigation for up to two hours.
Scientists say that the flare was not directed at Earth, minimizing its impact. However, over the next two weeks the region will rotate towards Earth and there is a good chance another "X class" flare could occur.
While the most common side effect on Earth from solar flares is the aurora borealis, flares have been known to cause widespread disruption of power lines. On March 6, 1989, a relatively small flare caused a blackout in parts of Canada.
Even if half of what 'www.gmail is to creepy.con is true does it really matter. If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about.
but, thats just my opinion.
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|Google also went down finally they said... tough only for a couple of minutes... http://www.gmail-is-too-creepy.com/
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|Lol! The author of that website is funny.
They read soooo much into "what Google didn't say."
Talk about paranoid.
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|I agree, dig too deep and you'll never get out of the hole. I just want to know why someone is so vigilantly trying to stop google. Could it be that google is on to a good thing and people hate mass internet trends?!?
This is clearly something I will proceed to not think about.
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|Tell me about it! Today my Toaster spontaneously combusted and my refrigerator ate my dog!
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|I love when nature proves that it is the dominator. World superpowers break like matchsticks when nature takes it's course mwaahahahaha! I'm all in favor of 'non human induced world change' no matter what 'human novelties' get broken by it.
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|"I love when nature proves that it is the dominator."
Katrina was a 'non human induced world change.' You're telling us you're happy about it?
I know you're probably not trying to say that, but these are sensitive times. You might want to think a little harder before you make statements like that.
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|In theory nature created man, and therefore man is an extension of nature. We have molded the world more than any hurricane ever will. Just look and see how many people give money to the relief effort and how the strong help the weak.
Mankind is natural.
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|Ah, a Solar Flare
*adds to his BOFH Excuse Book"
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|its microsoft, google and g w bush fault they have joined forces for world domination
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|I'm just waiting fo someone to blame President Bush for this flare...:>)
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|Everyone knows it's not Bush's fault. Duh!
It's Microsoft's
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|I'm just waiting for Bush to blame his incompetence on this flare. Somehow, someway.
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|it's Al-Queida's fault.. they set off a car bomb on the sun to show the US lol(why not? everything else thats bad that happens these days is blamed on them)
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|umm... well they are a terrorist group that usually claims the credit for those events in the first place.... ?
lol
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|Allah's punishing all infidels, beware!! Either that or maybe he just had some indigestion from eating too many pork chops!
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|Yeah. My Internet's been going in and out - mostly out - over that past couple of hours. I wondered what it was...
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|me too, i was downloading linux iso's and my cable modem's lights appeared connected but websites couldnt be viewed. Hope it doesnt happen often or we're gonna have to redesign some technologies!
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|I know my cellphone got alot less signal on wed. and wed. night. As a matter of fact, maybe it was everyone's cell phones - calls dropped alot and I couldn't get any service indoors.
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|I've been experiencing much the same as you today. I use a cable connection and the same thing has been happening with the cable television channels. I've been a ham radio operator for 38 years and have experienced a lot of strange communication anomolies during major solar flares in the past. One this large is going to cause some strange communications errors for a few days.
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|Damn. That is some crazy stuff. I knew today felt weird! heh
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