Mobile operators in the United States faced a blackout this Thursday | JAKUB PORZYCKI/NURPHOTO/AFP/METSUL METEOROLOGIA
A “blackout” in the cell phone system in the United States coincided with two major solar flares this Thursday. There have been three large explosions on the Sun in the last 24 hours, the largest occurring on Thursday evening in the X6.3 class. NOAA space weather experts say it's unlikely that solar activity caused the phone system to stop working.
Two powerful solar flares erupted from the sun on Wednesday night and in the early hours of Thursday morning. The first of class X1.8 took place yesterday at 8:07 p.m. Brazilian time. The second X1.7 eruption erupted at 3:32 a.m. today, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said in a statement about the events.
Meanwhile, widespread cell phone outages were reported nationwide in the United States on Thursday morning following the solar flares. According to the Associated Press, tens of thousands of outages were reported by major wireless carriers such as AT&T, Verzion and TMobile. Reports of outages began around the same time the solar flares occurred.
Solar scientists have cast doubt on the claim that there is a connection between the two events. “Explosions only cause radio frequency degradation where it is daytime on Earth. Solar flares occurred at night in the USA.
In a statement on social media, the Space Weather Prediction Center, NOAA's space weather forecasting and monitoring center, stressed as “unlikely” a connection between the cellular system power outage and the two highintensity solar flares that were just hours apart.
Larger explosions on the Sun produce large bursts of plasma into space, called coronal mass ejections, and in the most powerful explosions like tonight, they can condense into a largescale ejection that can trigger a powerful geomagnetic storm and midlatitude auroras in both hemispheres. The solar storm may generate geomagnetic activity that may disrupt radio communications and GPS navigation services.
Why is the sun so often in the news these days? Because it is close to the maximum of the elevenyear solar cycle, during which many explosions usually occur. And what is a solar cycle? Our sun is a giant ball of electrically charged hot gas. This charged gas moves and creates a strong magnetic field. The sun's magnetic field goes through a cycle called the solar cycle.
About every 11 years, the sun's magnetic field changes completely. This means that the sun's north and south poles swap places. It then takes about 11 years for the sun's north and south poles to rotate again. The solar cycle influences activity on the sun's surface, such as the formation of sunspots caused by the sun's magnetic fields.
When magnetic fields change, activity on the surface also changes. One way to track the solar cycle is to count the number of sunspots. The start of a solar cycle is a solar minimum, or when the sun has the fewest sunspots. Over time, solar activity and thus the number of sunspots increases. The middle of the solar cycle is the solar maximum, or the time when the sun has the most sunspots. When the cycle ends, it returns to the solar minimum and then a new cycle begins.
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