Scientists have warned that a solar firestorm due to occur in 2012 could disrupt television and internet broadcasts of the London Olympic Games.
Surges in solar activity cause disruption to satellite and terrestrial communications equipment, but until now it has been virtually impossible to predict solar storms in advance.
The launch of Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory means scientists will now able to give advance warning of magnetic storms and solar flares.
Sensitive electronic circuits can then be turned off before the storms, minimising damage to satellite transmitters and resultant disruption.
Richard Harrison, of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, in Oxfordshire, told The Independent: ‘The Sun’s activity has a strong influence on the Earth. Space weather can affect the whole population.
‘The recipe is right, it’s the beginning of a new cycle. The Olympics could be bang in the middle of the next solar maximum which could affect the transmissions of satellites.
The Nasa probe, which is scheduled to be launched from Cape Canaveral on Saturday, will spend five years in orbit around the Earth investigating the causes of solar activity including sun spots, solar winds and violent eruptions from the Sun known as coronal mass ejections.
Professor Harrison added: ‘Such events can expose astronauts to deadly particle doses, can disable satellites, cause power grid failures on Earth and disrupt communications.’
The observatory will follow a figure-of-eight orbit 22,300 miles above the Earth’s surface and will measure fluctuations in the Sun’s output, map magnetic fields and collect images.
It is likely to beam back up to 50 times more data than previous Nasa missions, with a daily volume equivalent to downloading 500,000 music tracks from the internet.
The launch comes as as the Sun appears to be increasing in activity after several years in a ‘deep minimum’.
Between 2008 and 2009 there were more than 250 ‘spotless’ days – a record low since 1913.
In the past two weeks, two solar flares have developed, which indicates the Sun is entering a more active phase in its eleven-year cycle.
Solar flares are large explosions in the Sun’s atmosphere which sees plasma heated to incredibly high temperatures and thrown out close to light speed.
X-ray and UV radiation given off from the flares is capable of disrupting radio, electronic and radar communications.
Sunspots are the physical manifestation of the Sun’s natural fluctuations in magnetic activity which operate on a roughly 11-year cycle.
At the peak of the cycle, violent eruptions called coronal mass ejections occur in the Sun’s atmosphere, flinging out immense quantities of electrically-charged matter.
In 1989, a solar storm caused power blackouts across the U.S. and Canada.
Orbiting satellites are especially vulnerable to the effects of solar flares erupting from the Sun’s surface, and the risk is greatest during a solar maximum when there is the greatest number of sunspots.
source: dailymail.co.uk
