Large solar flare causes magnetic storm and telecommunications disruptions
The Sun has unleashed its most powerful solar flare in seven years, and it's likely that this phenomenon is already causing problems.
The X6.3-class solar flare is the most powerful of the current solar cycle, called solar cycle 25. The flare reached its peak activity at 5:34 pm EST (2234 GMT) on Thursday, February 22, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It was the third solar flare in a 24-hour period coming from an active solar region known as AR 3590.
Previously, an '1:32 EST (06.32 GMT 07.32 CET).
The two previous solar flares of NOAA AR 3590 were not accompanied by massive plasma outbursts called coronal mass ejections (CMEs). According to the European Space Agency (ESA), the X6.3-class solar flare was not accompanied by a CME either.
Powerful solar flares can affect communications and electrical infrastructure on Earth when accompanied by CMEs. This can happen when solar plasma hits Earth's protective magnetic bubble, the magnetosphere. Although the two previous solar flares appeared to be related to widespread cellular communications outages reported across the United States on Thursday morning, AT&T says the outage was caused by a software issue, Reuters reported.
NOAA said the X6.3 flare has the potential to cause temporary degradation and signal loss for high-frequency radio users on the sunlit side of Earth. The agency added that the general public should not be concerned by this X6.3 flare.
Coincidentally… AT&T reports major problems in US
It may be a coincidence, but this morning tens of thousands of AT&T users in the USA found themselves without a cellular signal. It definitely wasn't a cyberattack, but the telco blamed it on "internal issues." In fact, it seems that T-Mobile and Verizon have also reported problems, although to a lesser extent than their competitor.
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The article Large Solar Flare Causes Magnetic Storm and Telecommunications Outages comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/grande-brillamento-solare-causa-tempesa-magnetica-e-interruzioni-nelle-telecomunicazioni/ on Fri, 23 Feb 2024 19:39:09 +0000.