Experts tell people not to worry about ‘canyon of fire’ solar storm

Experts say ‘weak’ solar storm may cause mild electricity fluctuations and impact some satellite functions

Solar winds from the snapping of a “canyon of fire” filament on the sun are likely to cause only a weak geomagnetic storm on Earth on Thursday, experts say.

On 15 July, a snake-like filament of plasma on the Sun’s surface had erupted, carving out a giant “canyon of fire” about 384,000 km long and 20,000 km deep on the star.

“The long snake-like filament cartwheeled its way off the Sun in a stunning ballet,” Tamitha Skov, a space weather physicist, tweeted about the eruption.

“The magnetic orientation of this Earth-directed solar storm is going to be tough to predict. G2-level (possibly G3) conditions may occur if the magnetic field of this storm is oriented southward,” Dr Skov said.

Such plasma expelled from the Sun can launch explosive jets of solar wind towards the Earth called coronal mass ejections (CMEs).

CMEs contain electrically conducting plasma that can pass between the sun and our planet at high speeds of about 2,000 km per second, and the energy in these eruptions could be hundreds of thousands of times more than what all the power plants on Earth could generate through an entire year.

When this solar wind interacts with the strong magnetic field around the Earth, it could trigger powerful geomagnetic storms which in turn could potentially impact satellite operations.

Previous research has found that strong solar winds can severely disrupt satellites, and cause them to drop out of their orbits.

While stronger geomagnetic storms can short-circuit power-grids, experts have classified the one from the “canyon of fire” as a “weak” G1-class storm that could likely cause mild electricity fluctuations and may impact some satellite functions such as those used in GPS systems, according to SpaceWeather.

Its release follows the Sun coming to the most active phase of its 11 year-long solar cycle, and its activity is expected to rise in the following years and fall again after reaching a maximum in 2025.

Experts have warned that a very strong “once-in-a-century solar super-storm” could potentially take out satellites and also short circuit power grids.

The magnetic fields generated on Earth by the 1921 New York Railroad Storm – one of the biggest solar storms to have impacted the planet – took out radio communications, telegraph, and telephone systems in different parts of the world, including in New York.

The Carrington Event, another solar superstorm to impact the Earth in 1859, released nearly the same energy as 10 billion megaton atomic bombs that fried telegraph systems across the world.

A moderate-level solar storm that struck the Earth in 1989, caused power disruptions in Quebec, Canada, that were resolved in a few hours.