The largest solar storm to hit our planet for more than 20 years could disrupt communications and satellite navigation systems, the British Geological Survey has warned.<\/p>\n
The organisation has upgraded its geomagnetic forecast to the highest intensity level amid what has been dubbed a \u201ccannibal storm\u201d.<\/p>\n
Current predictions suggest a second storm, feeding off one from earlier in the week, could have further effects on space and ground-based technologies, the BGS said.<\/p>\n
Early indications such as ground measurements of solar energetic particles were some of the largest recorded since 2005, it said.<\/p>\n
NASA has postponed a space launch because of the \u201chighly elevated solar activity\u201d.<\/p>\n
The mission was to carry two Mars-bound NASA spacecraft.<\/p>\n
\u201cNasa is postponing launch until space weather conditions improve,\u201dspace tech company Blue Origin said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are currently assessing opportunities to establish our next launch window based on forecasted space weather and range availability.\u201d<\/p>\n
The solar activity meant the northern lights might be visible across parts of the northern hemisphere on Wednesday night, following a similar alert for the southern lights in the southern hemisphere.<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s Met Office said the solar storm was a result of the sun going through an active phase experiencing coronal mass ejections, which are large expulsions that send solar particles towards the Earth.<\/p>\n
As these particles interact with the Earth\u2019s atmosphere, they form a dazzling light display, commonly known as the northern lights or southern lights.<\/p>\n
\u201cMultiple coronal mass ejections have reached Earth in recent days,\u201d Met Office space weather manager Krista Hammond said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis event is likely to be of a similar magnitude to the one in May 2024, which brought auroras across much of England and Wales.\u201d<\/p>\n
-with AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The largest solar storm to hit our planet for more than 20 years could disrupt communications and satellite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":{"0":"post-281922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}