Big sunspot unleashes major solar flare

On March 7, 2012 at around 5.58 am Sri Lanka standard time, a gigantic dark sunspot has unleashed another major flare. This one is said to be the strongest yet, an X5-class eruption, has ejected an enormous amount of energetic charge particles into space.

These particles, mostly electrons and protons propelled toward earth are expected to reach our planet on March 8 and 9.

Although the Earth's magnetosphere deflects most of the charged particles, the interplanetary magnetic field, which is associated with the solar wind, can cause disturbances in the geomagnetic field. When these particles enter the geomagnetic field they cause increased ionization in the ionosphere causing the variability of ionospheric activity, states Professor in Physics, University of Colombo Prof Chandana Jayaratne in a press release.

"In addition to the brilliant auroral displays at the north and south poles of the earth, we can expect several mishaps with the arrival of these charged particles to earth during the cause of this week viz blackout of short-wave radio communication due to ionospheric disturbances, explosion of some power cables and transformers, voltage fluctuations and tripping of circuit breakers due to induce effects causing power failures in some countries, malfunctions in some long-distance telephone systems, and above all the inactivation of some artificial satellites causing occasional reboots of onboard computers, adding noise to imaging systems and interruptions to the world's TV and telecommunication networks. During the 1972 August episode of solar flares, among other damages, a 230000-volt transformer in British Colombia exploded. Sri Lanka being located close to the equator and away from polar regions will experience minimum disturbance, if at all, from this solar storm and there is no need for us to get panic about it", Prof Chandana Jayaratne said.

Whether the above mishaps do occur or not this incident has opened the eyes of scientists to develop techniques to mitigate such extraterrestrial hazards in the future.