The sun moaned, and groaned, and spat out a mass coronal ejection. What is that? Something that’s going to ruin your day.
The short answer is the sun barfed up a bunch of charged particles that move really fast, and are moving faster every second. Those charged particles are going to hit the planet, particularly the northern parts, today. And that’s when things will get interesting.
Basically, the Sun just puked a whole bunch of radio interference on us. Expect GPS signals to be fuzzy, radio (like your WiFi) to act strangely, and possibly the power grid will be monkeyed with, among other things.
The storm, which has produced a radiation event that rated an S3, or strong, designation on the NOAA’s five-level space weather scales, is growing as it moves away from the sun. When it strikes the Earth, the particles are expected to be moving at 4 million mph.
“It’s hitting us right in the nose,” Joe Kunches, a scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the BBC. “Space weather has gotten very interesting over the past 24 hours.”
In short, odds are pretty good you’re going to have a somewhat annoying moment today, thanks to the giant fusion reactor in the sky that grants us life. Thanks, Mr. Sun!
(Image courtesy NASA on Flickr)