Don’t set your Google Inactive Account Manager just yet, but there are billions of tons of solar matter hurtling toward the Earth at more than 600 miles (970 kilometers) per second. NASA estimates the plasma will hit our atmosphere late Friday night, U.S. Eastern Daylight Time.
This CME (coronal mass ejection) isn’t likely to do anything but make the Aurora Borealis more spectacular, so there’s not much point in immediately preparing your Google account for the big sign-off. But a solar flare that accompanied the spewing of electrified gas did knock out some radios early Thursday, and there could be more dramatic solar events coming later this year.
Thursday’s flare was the biggest so far for 2013, a year that is due to end with the climax of a regular 11-year cycle of solar activity, according to Alex Young, associate director for science in NASA‘s heliophysics division.
The flare, which peaked at 3:16 a.m. Eastern time in the U.S., would have affected radios in the part of the world that was in daylight then, Young said. Flares typically affect GPS (Global Positioning System) and some aviation and shipping radios, as well as shortwave systems such as amateur radio, he said. NASA doesn’t log anecdotal reports of radio failures, but blackouts typically mean a temporary total loss of signal. “It’s pretty much a full disruption,” Young said.
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