Solar Storm Strikes Earth
October 30, 2003
The UFO hotline in Mannheim, Germany, was inundated with calls as concerned skywatchers rang up to report strange lights on the horizon. What they were seeing was no alien invasion, but the aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights which are generated when charged particles from the sun interfere with the earth's magnetic field.
While the storms can have a major impact on some high-tech devices, scientists say they are harmless to human beings. "There are people who really worry about these things, but there is absolultely no cause for concern. A sunstorm is practically irrelevant to humans", said the president of the German Society for Environmental Medicine, Professor Claus Piekarski, in an interview with the German news agency DPA.
Satellite data scrambled
The solar storms, which are expected to continue for another day or two, temporarily interfered with communications systems and satellites had to be switched to stand-by mode. Some airline passengers had to put up with delays because aviation safety agencies took the precaution of cutting back on traffic volume as radar and radio communications were hit.
Planes disappeared from radar screens for seconds at a time, but aviation experts said that at no stage were passengers at risk.
The U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colorado said the sun unleashed a cloud of charged particles 13 times the size of planet earth. The cosmic rays were so intense that transmissions by the European Space Agency's SOHO satellite, the German satellite CHAMP and the NASA satellite ACE all failed temporarily.
GPS briefly disoriented
The U.S. Global Positioning System, or GPS, sporadically delivered inaccurate or incomplete data, according to Frank Jansen, director of the space weather institute in the German town of Greifswald.
Power plants from Sweden to New Jersey cut production in anticipation of energy surges caused when what scientists call coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, hit the earth at the speed of light. The phenomenon can lead to massive blackouts if utility companies do not take the necessary measures to prevent power surges.
Under clear skies, the aurora, which are usually only seen at the North Pole, were visible as far south as Milan, Italy.
CMEs come around every few years but this one was especially strong. The X-ray and solar radiation storms rank as the second largest such events recorded in the latest 11-year cycle, according to the NOAA.
Germany's Max Planck Institute says the sun has been more active over the last 60 years than in the previous thousand. What it can't say yet is why.