If you often face signal problems while talking on your mobile, blame it on a significant solar flare which is on its way to affect communication systems on Earth on Wednesday. According to The National Weather Service's Space Weather Prediction Center in the United States, the solar flare which emitted on Saturday, 29th March could affect satellites and cause GPS errors. Electrical power lines could be hit by extra current, and high frequency communications could be blocked when the radiation hits Earth.
According to NASA, this is a powerful burst of radiation but its harmful affects cannot pass through the Earth's atmosphere to physically hurt humans. However, powerful flares can affect the Earth's atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communication signals travel.
Saturday's solar flare was categorized by NASA as an X1 class eruption. The X-class flares are known to be the most intense eruptions. The number indicates more information about the strength of the solar flares. For example An X2, for instance, is twice as intense as an X1.
According to NOAA's update, the weekend solar flare and several recent eruptions of super-hot solar plasma (called coronal mass ejections) could trigger a minor geomagnetic storm on April 2.
Photograph by NASA
