Mark Megahan
Get out your tinfoil umbrella. Experts are warning on August 7 that “a massive solar spot” erupted on the far side of the Sun and it’s rotating around at us over the weekend. If your computer or cell phone has been acting funky, now you know why. With old Sol on the 11-year-cycle upswing to the peak Maunder maximum, we can expect more of this to come.
Solar storms disrupt communications
According to the folks who get the big bucks for keeping track of these things, we’re in for a “potential geomagnetic storm that disrupts satellites, and even causes chaos in airline navigation systems.”
Sunspots are really freaky things because when solar plasma comes hurtling out of the nuclear fusion furnace in our direction, sensitive electronics tend to get scrambled.
Sunspots are actually cool spots on the surface of the sun. That’s why they appear dark against the surroundings. DON’T try to look at it to be sure.
They have astronomical tools for that. You need to take the experts’ word for it that solar spots “can stretch for hundreds of millions of miles.”
It all starts with magnetic disruptions in the deepest layer of the sun’s atmosphere they expose “the cooler layers of the star underneath.” This latest one, Spaceweather warns, is “so big it is changing the way the sun vibrates.”
When solar flares strike Mother Earth, she feels the sting. They can “affect the Earth’s magnetic field, and cause disruptions in GPS and communication satellites that orbit close to the planet, as well as affect airplane navigation systems.”
Watch for dazzling auroras
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, their Space Weather Prediction Center is advising that over the weekend, “the geomagnetic field around Earth would be unsettled.”
They’re certain that “higher northern latitudes could see dazzling auroras, although it is unclear whether it will turn into a full-blown solar storm.”
They happened to get a preview of what was going on, even though it was all the way on the other side of the sun, because it “affected the Star’s vibrations.”
As explained by Dean Pesnell, project scientist of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, “The Sun continually vibrates because of convection bubbles hitting the surface.”
Inside the star, temperature differences “cause hot and cool bubbles to continually rise and fall, which moves energy and causes vibrations that can be detected by solar observatories.”
NASA’s SDO can catch the whole show. “The larger the sunspot and the stronger the magnetic field the larger this delay will be.“
