A giant “Valley of Fire” filament on the Sun is set to hit Earth today (July 20) or tomorrow (July 21) with the solar wind, triggering a weak G1 geomagnetic storm.
According to SpaceWeather.com, sungazers first spotted solar flares on July 12 as dark, thread-like streaks against the sun’s bright background (opens in new tab).
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‘Canyon of Fire’ Solar Storm Headed Our Way
Then, on July 15, a filament erupted (opens in new tab) coming down from our star’s northern hemisphere, creating a volcano about 238,880 miles (384,400 km) long and 12,400 miles (20,000 km) deep.
Solar material falling on the surface of the Sun and towards us. Solar filaments are large arcs of electric gas (or plasma) that worm their way through the Sun’s atmosphere at the will of the star’s powerful magnetic field.
These giant magnetic tubes can hold huge masses of plasma above the Sun’s surface, but they’re also very unstable — and once collapsed, they can launch explosive jets of solar wind known as coronal mass ejections. (CMEs) are said to barrel toward Earth.
“A long, snake-like filament shot out of the Sun in a spectacular ballet,” Timitha Skoff, a space weather physicist, wrote on Twitter after the burst (opens in new tab).
“The attractive course of this Earth-bound sun oriented tempest will be challenging to foresee.
G2-level (possibly G3) conditions may occur if the storm’s magnetic field is southward!” (G2 and G3 storms are those considered moderate and strong, respectively) The CME ejected from the collapse of the filament should fall to Earth today or tomorrow.
On planets with strong magnetic fields, such as our own, our magnetic field absorbs barrages of solar debris from CMEs, causing powerful geomagnetic storms.
During these storms, the Earth’s magnetic field is slightly compressed by waves of highly energetic particles, which collide with magnetic field lines near the poles and excite molecules in the air, delivering energy as light.
occurs to produce colorful aurora, such as those that make up the Northern Lights. Thankfully, the storm from this thread is weak. Classified as a G1 solar storm, it has the potential to disrupt power grids and affect some satellite functions – including mobile devices and GPS systems, but not dramatically.
This will bring the aurora as far south as Michigan and Maine (opens in new tab). More intense geostorms can affect our planet’s magnetic field with enough force to send satellites tumbling to Earth, Live Science previously reported, and scientists warn that extreme geostorms could even bring down the Internet.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center (opens in new tab), debris from CMEs typically takes about 15 to 18 hours to erupt, but it can be as slow as this CME and May take longer. to arrive.
The storm occurs when the Sun enters the most active phase of its approximately 11-year solar cycle. This is the second solar storm to hit Earth in 24 hours. Astronomers have known since 1775 that solar activity rises and falls in cycles, but recently, the Sun has been more active than expected, predicted by NOAA (opens in new tab).
is about twice as large as the sunspot. The sun’s activity is expected to climb gradually over the next few years, reaching an overall maximum in 2025 before decreasing again.
A paper published July 20 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics (opens in new tab) proposes a new model for solar activity by counting sunspots in each hemisphere separately — a method that Could be used to make more accurate solar predictions, say researchers in the paper.
Scientists believe that the largest solar storm in modern history was the Carrington event of 1859, which released about 10 billion 1 megatons of energy. After hitting Earth, the powerful stream of solar particles fried telegraph systems around the world and caused auras brighter than the full moon to be seen south of the Caribbean.
Scientists warn that if a similar event were to occur today, it would cause trillions of dollars in damage and cause massive blackouts, similar to the 1989 solar storm that released a billion tons of plasma and causing a blackout across the Canadian province. Quebec, reported by NASA.
