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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The largest solar flare in five years is racing toward Earth, threatening to unleash a torrent of charged particles that could disrupt power grids, GPS and airplane flights. The sun erupted Tuesday evening, and the effects should start smacking Earth around 7 a.m. EST Thursday, according to forecasters at the federal government's Space Weather Prediction Center.

An immense blast of plasma spewed late Sunday night from the sun led to the strongest radiation storm bombarding our planet since 2005, and a rare warning from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency -- and even a plan to redirect certain high-flying airplanes. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center -- the nation’s official source of warnings about space weather and its impact on Earth -- issued a watch for a geomagnetic storm expected to hit our planet Tuesday morning after a satellite witnessed an ultraviolet flash from the massive solar eruption, according to Spaceweather.com.

A powerful solar eruption is expected to blast a stream of charged particles toward Earth tomorrow (Jan. 24), as the strongest radiation storm since 2005 rages on the sun. Early this morning (0359 GMT Jan. 23, which corresponds to late Sunday, Jan. 22 at 10:59 p.m. EST), NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory caught an extreme ultraviolet flash from a huge eruption on the sun , according to the skywatching website Spaceweather.com. The solar flare spewed from sunspot 1402, a region of the sun that has become increasingly active lately. Several NASA satellites, including the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the Solar Heliospheric Observatory...

by Dr. Tony Phillips NASA’s Goddard Space Flight CenterFor the first time, a spacecraft far from Earth has turned and watched a solar storm engulf our planet. The movie, released today during a NASA press conference, has galvanized solar physicists, who say it could lead to important advances in space weather forecasting. NASA’s STEREO spacecraft and new data processing techniques have succeeded in tracking space weather events from their origin in the sun’s corona to impact with the Earth, resolving a 40-year mystery about the structure of the structures that cause space weather: how the structures that impact the Earth...

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a scientific agency that monitors atmospheric and ocean conditions, has predicted a state of maximum solar activity that may strike Earth, causing total darkness this decade. Forecasters and operators at the agency are keeping a close eye as the sun enters a phase of activity that may cause severe disruption of global power grids, airline communication, military satellites and even GPS applications on mobile phones and cars. Besides this, US Federal Government studies revealed that this extreme solar activity and emissions may result in complete blackouts for years, in several areas of the...

In Sept. 1859, on the eve of a below-average1 solar cycle, the sun unleashed one of the most powerful storms in centuries. The underlying flare was so unusual, researchers still aren't sure how to categorize it. The blast peppered Earth with the most energetic protons in half-a-millennium, induced electrical currents that set telegraph offices on fire, and sparked Northern Lights over Cuba and Hawaii. This week, officials have gathered at the National Press Club in Washington DC to ask themselves a simple question: What if it happens again? Modern power grids are vulnerable to solar storms. Photo credit: Martin Stojanovski...

The risk of a devastating space storm wreaking havoc like a "global Katrina" and costing the world trillions of pounds should be taken "seriously", claims Britain's top scientist. Professor Sir John Beddington, the Government's chief scientist, said that the Sun was waking up from a quiet period and was likely to throw a lot more "space weather" at the Earth. Also, the world was increasingly vulnerable to damage because of our dependence on satellites, communication networks and computer devices. If a solar storm hit the Earth, it could throw out navigation systems, crash stock markets, ground aircraft and cause power...

Do you know what an EMP is, as in an EMP bomb? Great, then you're one of the few that does, but for the rest of us let me explain. It's an "electro-magnetic pulse" and EMP's come from a highly specialized bomb that delivers magnetic radiation that can fry electrical circuits, but does little else to humans, animals or buildings. An EMP is a common occurence in nature. When it happens we call it a CME event or a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME's come from our sun - see photo on left). Just think of it as a solar storm...

A new study from the National Academy of Sciences outlines grim possibilities on Earth for a worst-case scenario solar storm. Damage to power grids and other communications systems could be catastrophic, the scientists conclude, with effects leading to a potential loss of governmental control of the situation. The prediction is based in part on major solar storm in 1859 caused telegraph wires to short out in the United States and Europe, igniting widespread fires. It was perhaps the worst in the past 200 years, according to the new study, and with the advent of modern power grids and satellites, much...

A recurrence of the 1859 solar superstorm would be a cosmic Katrina, causing billions of dollars of damage to satellites, power grids and radio communications The solar superstorm of 1859 was the fiercest ever recorded. Auroras filled the sky as far south as the Caribbean, magnetic compasses went haywire and telegraph systems failed. Ice cores suggest that such a blast of solar particles happens only once every 500 years, but even the storms every 50 years could fry satellites, jam radios and cause coast-to-coast blackouts. The cost of such an event justifies more systematic solar monitoring and beefier protection for...

When I was in grade school -- maybe fourth or fifth grade -- I remember being struck with great fear when our teacher informed the class that the sun was a dying star. How in the world were we going to fix that, I wondered. The JAXA/NASA photo above gives plain old picturesque evidence that the sun is doing something out there. Maybe exploding out into space. Is that a prelude to imploding into itself. Will the sun do something nova-like and just fade out? (JAXA stands for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.) Don't know. And neither do you. Not...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New twin spacecraft are helping scientists track pesky solar storms from the sun to Earth, where they can disrupt satellites, communications and sometimes the electricity supply, the U.S. space agency said on Thursday. Even though the STEREO spacecraft are struggling to get into their final orbits, they are already sending back images that have experts re-evaluating what they know about these storms, called coronal mass ejections, project scientists said. "These are big powerful things that leave the sun," Michael Kaiser, STEREO project scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, told reporters. "They are storms...

A violent solar explosion sent a dangerous wave of radiation through space late Tuesday, prompting NASA to order the crews of Discovery and the International Space Station to take shelter overnight, according to Local 6 News partner Florida Today. The solar flare erupted around 9:40 p.m., unleashing enough radiation to disrupt radio communications on Earth and in orbit while endangering astronauts circling 220 miles above the planet.

The next 11-year solar storm cycle should be significantly stronger than the current one, which may mean big problems for power grids and GPS systems and other satellite-enabled technology, scientists announced today. The stronger solar storms could start as early as this year or as late as 2008 and should peak around 2012. "We predict the next solar cycle will be 30 to 50 percent stronger than the last cycle," said Mausumi Dikpati, a solar scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, yesterday in a telephone briefing with reporters. The last cycle peaked in 2001. A...

A major solar storm with the force of a billion megaton bombs could be set to hit the Earth, scientists warned yesterday. The storm is expected to be unleashed from a group of sunspots 20 times the size of Earth, with experts believing it is aimed at our planet. The area of spots - called Number 652 - could release a storm powerful enough to damage satellites and put power grids out of action. The Sun's last bout of intense storms occurred last autumn, when a string of ten major flares over two weeks knocked out satellites, damaged others, and...

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/12nov_haywire.htm?list134725

Event #49 - 28 October 2003 Issued: 16:30 UTC, 28 October 2003 SOURCE EVENT Class X17.2 Flare in Region 486 at 11:10 UTC on 28 October 2003 Type II: 1250 km/sec Estimated LASCO-derived Plane of Sky Velocity: 2125 km/sec ESTIMATED TIME OF ARRIVAL OF SHOCK AT EARTH Estimated Impact Window: 00:00 UTC on 29 October to 21:00 UTC on 29 October Preferred Predicted Impact Time: 08:00 UTC, 29 October 2003 (3 am EST on 29 October) Estimated Shock Strength (0=Weakest, 9=Strongest): 9 Predicted Behavior of IMF at Shock Impact At Shock Impact, the Interplanetary Magnetic Field is predicted to initially...

A storm of particles and radiation from the Sun, a kind of disturbance that has disabled or destroyed satellites on dozens of occasions, crossed the path of the space shuttle Columbia just as it was making its descent to Earth, scientists said yesterday. The disturbance was detected by at least two NASA space probes as it passed from deep space toward Earth on Feb. 1, said Dr. Devrie S. Intriligator, director of the space plasma laboratory at the Carmel Research Center, a private laboratory in Santa Monica, Calif., who discovered the event by examining data from the probes. Experts...