The earth

By:ELHERALDO.CO Editorial

A new astronomical phenomenon will be experienced this Thursday, October 10 and could unleash serious effects on the planet Earth.

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According to American meteorologists, a solar storm will directly impact planet Earth, after the Sun expels a huge plasma ball and its magnetic field.

According to experts, this ball of plasma is heading towards the planet at high speed, which is why it generates a geomagnetic storm.

Regarding this phenomenon, the Nasa explains that a bombardment of large solar flares from masa coronal (EMC) They launched clouds of charged particles and magnetic fields towards Earth, generating the display of more intense auroras.

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This colonel mass would be traveling through space at a speed of 4 million kilometers per hour, which has motivated the issuance of a surveillance, says the United States Space Weather Prediction Center.

This solar storm was classified as level 4, on a scale of 1 to 5, which could cause failures in communication networks, electrical networks and even satellite operations.

“Geomagnetic storms can impact infrastructure in near-Earth orbit and on the Earth’s surface,” says the Space Weather Prediction Center.

The experts explained that in order to observe the northern lights it is necessary to be located in territories close to the Earth’s poles, however, the solar storm that occurred last May was visible at unusually low latitudes, including the south of USA and northern India.

According to NASA, last May a strong solar storm was recorded in which EMCs, traveling at speeds of up to 4.8 million kilometers per hour (three million miles per hour), grouped into waves. that reached Earth beginning on May 10, creating a long-lived geomagnetic storm that reached a rating of G5, the highest level on the geomagnetic storm scale, and one that has not been seen since 2003.

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“To a large extent, all the EMCs arrived at once, and the conditions were right to create a truly historic storm,” said Elizabeth MacDonald, NASA heliophysics citizen science leader and space scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“According to a measure of geomagnetic storm strength, called the storm disturbance time index (or Dst index), dating back to 1957, this storm was similar to the historic storms of 1958 and 2003. And with reports of auroras that were visible at only 26 degrees of magnetic latitude,” NASA says.

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According to experts, it is unlikely that household appliances will suffer any problems from the effects of the solar storm; However, they point out that it could generate voltage spikes or alterations in the electrical grid.

According to information published by RCN, the equipment most vulnerable to variations in electrical voltage are: routers, computers, and televisions.

One of the recommendations to avoid damage is to disconnect electrical appliances from the power.

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Several European countries experienced an episode of northern lights this Friday morning for the second time in five months, an event caused by the current solar cycle, with high activity of magnetic storms that occur on the Sun.

As happened last May, images were captured from distant locations such as Adliswil (Switzerland), Gdynia (Poland), Ringsted (Denmark) and the Canary Islands (Spain) that show the beauty of this natural phenomenon, with a reddish luminescence.

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Thus, from La Palma, in the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands, which is located at a latitude of 28º N, images were taken that capture this unusual event and that, before the episode in May, had not been reported for more than twenty years. , as explained to EFE at the time by the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC).

As happened at that time, the Sun emitted one of the most intense solar flares this Wednesday, October 9, classified as class X 1.8, producing an important coronal mass ejection in the direction of the Earth.

When this geomagnetic storm hits the planet, the atmosphere acts as a shield and deflects towards the poles all the ionized particles, mainly electrons and protons, which precipitate into the exosphere, emitting light of different colors that can be seen regularly in the polar regions.

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From the Astronorte amateur observatory, in La Palma, they also explain that if the intensity of these geomagnetic storms reaches the upper index Kp8, the auroras can be seen from regions at latitudes closer to the equator, as happened last morning.

With information from EFE