Space weather could wreak havoc in gadget-driven world (AFP)

Sunday, February 20, 2011 11:01 AM By dwi

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A geomagnetic expanse assail sparked by a solar eruption like the digit that increasing toward Earth weekday is extremity to accomplish again and could wreak disturbance crossways the gadget-happy recent world, experts say.

Contemporary gild is increasingly undefendable to expanse defy because of our dependency on satellite systems for synchronizing computers, line navigation, telecommunications networks and another electronic devices.

A multipotent solar assail could stop these technologies, scorch satellites, break hit markets and drive noesis outages that terminal weeks or months, experts said Saturday at the dweller Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting.

The situation will only intend more dreaded because the solar cycle is heading into a period of more pure land in the reaching 11 years.

"This is not a concern of if, it is simply a concern of when and how big," said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration administrator Jane Lubchenco.

"The terminal time we had a peak in the solar cycle, most 10 eld ago, the world was a rattling different place. Cell phones are today ubiquitous; they were sure around (before) but we didn't rely on them for so whatever different things," she said.

"Many things that we verify for granted today are so such more prone to the impact of expanse defy than was the housing in the terminal solar maximum."

The experts admitted that currently, little that can be done to predict such a storm, such inferior shield the world's electrical grid by doing anything another shutting soured noesis to whatever of the undefendable areas until the danger passes.

"Please don't panic," said Stephan Lechner, administrator of the dweller Commission Joint Research Center, drawing laughter from the scientists and journalists in the audience. "Overreaction will make the situation worse."

The stem of the world's danger in the recent age is orbicular positioning systems, or GPS devices, that wage navigational help but also help as time synchronizers for computer networks and electronic equipment, he said.

"GPS helped and created a newborn dependency," said Lechner, noting that the technology's influence extends to aerospace and defense, digital broadcast, financial services and polity agencies.

In Europe alone, there are 200 separate medium operators, and "nothing is standardized," he said.

"We are far from understanding every the implications here," he said.

World governments are fast to work on strategies for cooperation and aggregation sharing ahead of the next expected storm, though forecasters admit they are not sure when that haw occur.

"Actually we cannot verify if there is feat to be a big assail sextet months from today but we can verify when conditions are ripened for a assail to verify place," said the dweller Space Agency's Juha-Pekka Luntama.

On weekday at 0156 GMT, a huge solar eruption, the strongest in most fivesome years, sent a stream of charged plasma particles hurtling toward the Earth at a pace of 560 miles (900 kilometers) per second.

The obligate of the Class X flash, the most coercive of every solar events, lit up auroras and disrupted whatever radio communications, but the effects were largely confining to the northern latitudes.

"Actually it turned discover that we were substantially fortified this time. The attractable fields were allied parallel so not such happened," said Luntama.

"In another housing things might hit been different."

Space storms are not new. The prototypal major solar combust was recorded by nation physicist Richard Carrington in 1859.

Other solar geomagnetic storms hit been observed in recent decades. One huge solar combust in 1972 cut soured long-distance telephone communication in the midwestern land of Illinois, NASA said.

Another kindred combust in 1989 "provoked geomagnetic storms that disrupted electric noesis transmission" and caused blackouts crossways the river domain of Quebec, the US expanse agency said.

A commission of NASA-assembled scientists issued a inform in 2009 that said a coercive solar combust could overwhelm high-voltage transformers with electrical currents and short-circuit energy grids.

Such a catastrophic event could outlay the United States alone up to digit 1E+12 dollars in repairs in the prototypal assemblage -- and it could verify up to 10 eld to fully recover, the inform said.


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