Northern Lights may be visible way further south than usual thanks to outbursts from our Sun
The US National Weather Service has issued a warning that a G4 solar storm will lash Earth from Friday until Sunday.solar flares and coronal mass ejections from a sunspot 16 times wider than our home world. Five of these CME-derived solar flares are potentially directed at Earth, making for a geomagnetic storm later today.
"Additional solar eruptions could cause geomagnetic storm conditions to persist through the weekend," the interplanetary agency noted, releasing video of one such eruption that you can see below.CMEs are masses of charged particles – billions of tons of the stuff – and can hit speeds between 250 and 3,000 kilometres per second . The fastest CMEs can reach Earth from our Sun in less than a day, sometimes as little as 15 hours.
The December CMEs were in the G3 class, whereas the upcoming CMEs are rated as G4. Solar storms on the higher end of the spectrum can certainly be dangerous, such as the G5-classGiven that G4 isn't quite as bad as G5 but is still a step up from G3, it's not entirely clear if we'll be treated to rare auroras across the northern hemisphere or if there will be actual damage to power grids. ®G5 conditions.
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