Experts have warned that solar storms more powerful than those that struck Earth last week may continue to hit our planet until 2025.
Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Jonathan McDowell said the Sun has not yet reached "solar maximum," the most active point in its 11-year recurring solar cycle, where greater disturbance increases the Sun's total energy output.
The sun is expected to reach its "maximum" during the summer of next year, in July 2025, which will result in solar storms that may be worse compared to the Carrington event in 1859, which is the largest solar storm ever recorded.
"We could easily face much larger storms over the next year or two," Dr McDowell said.
The "extreme geomagnetic conditions (G5)" of last week's solar storm were caused by a disturbance on the Sun's surface, called a sunspot, that was larger than the disturbance that produced the famous Carrington event.
The Carrington solar storm has set telegraph wires on fire, cut off communications around the world, and even disabled ship compasses, and space weather experts predict that a direct hit from larger solar storms to come could be worse.
“It's certainly a scary time for satellite operators,” McDowell explains. At the solar minimum of 2019, the number of sunspots visible on the Sun's surface was effectively zero, but at the next maximum in July 2025, the US National Space Weather Prediction Center estimates that there could be There are up to 115 sunspots."
These magnetically dense regions of turbulence on the solar surface produce solar flares and powerful plasma explosions called "coronal mass ejections" (CME).
During the past few days, a severe solar storm hit the Earth, creating an intense display of the northern lights in unconventional places.
While the stunning light display was unique to observers, it disabled GPS satellites and agricultural equipment in the American Midwest. As a result, agricultural activities have stopped, according to local farmers. Moreover, the increased atmospheric drag resulting from such storms has accelerated the orbital decay of satellites, including the Hubble Space Telescope.
According to Dr. McDowell, the greatest risks are still to come as the sun approaches the peak of its solar cycle, expected in the summer of 2025.
Dr McDowell added that these events would be worrying for satellite operators, explaining: “This entire period of the next few years will drag satellites down much more than most of the last decade.”
Astronomers have discovered that the Hubble Space Telescope is likely to end its life cycle a little sooner than expected, due to drag resulting from solar storms.
Although Hubble is relatively stable in its orbit, its path can be viewed as a "free fall" inevitably returning to Earth. Dr. McDowell said Hubble's orbital decay rate had doubled, "to about 80 meters per day instead of 40 meters per day, due to the storm last weekend."
Dr. McDowell works directly with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched into a distant orbit 86,500 miles away in 1999, to collect X-ray emissions from exploding stars, distant galaxy clusters and black holes orbiting matter.
The Chandra X-ray Telescope team implemented protective measures during the recent solar storm. Dr. McDowell said that during the recent solar storm, "we took some precautions to salvage some of its instruments to better protect it from the onslaught of the storm. Certain parts are sealed to reduce the risk of a short circuit or electrical damage to the Chandra sensors, but not the entire spacecraft. We have lost expensive satellites." "The price in solar storms in the past."
McDowell noted that currently, the predictive method used by space weather experts to predict when a major solar storm is likely to strike is based on tracking the path of sunspots and predicting their path toward Earth. Stressing that there is a need to improve forecasting capabilities.