The beautiful green, purple and red colors of the Northern Lights may be visible tonight from northern parts of the upper Midwest thanks to a solar ejection crashing into Earth.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center (SPWC) has issued a G1 geomagnetic storm watch for June 4 in anticipation of a coronal mass ejection (CME) ejected from the Sun that could disrupt our magnetic field. planet hits.
G1 geomagnetic storms can cause the Northern Lights to be seen as far south as northern Michigan and Maine.
“A coronal mass ejection is an eruption of solar material. When they arrive on Earth, a geomagnetic storm could result,” the SWPC said in the release. “A CME that left the Sun on June 1 could begin impacting Earth’s atmosphere on June 4.”
“The aurora may become visible along the horizon of the northern states and the far northern states of the Midwest.”
G1 Look for Tuesday June 4…
CMEs are huge clouds of solar plasma and magnetic field emitted by the Sun, usually from magnetically active regions such as sunspots, and often accompanied by solar flares.
If Earth is in the path of a CME, it could reach our planet in one to three days, depending on the speed of the ejection. When a CME strikes Earth’s magnetosphere, it can create geomagnetic storms due to its interaction with our planet’s magnetic field.
Geomagnetic storms are ranked on a scale from G1 (small) to G5 (extreme), meaning the storm hitting us tonight is the weakest type. There are about 1,700 G1 storms per eleven-year solar cycle, while more powerful G4 storms occur only about 100 times per cycle, and G5 storms are only observed about four times per cycle.
The G5 geomagnetic storm that hit Earth on May 10 and produced the Northern Lights was seen in all 50 US states and as far south as Mexico, and was the first recorded since 2003.
“The strength of a solar storm is rated on a scale analogous to the scale of a hurricane. Roger Dube, professor of physics at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, said Newsweek.
‘Earth’s magnetic field causes charged particles to spiral around the polar regions as they move, increasing the chance they will collide with molecules in the atmosphere. These collisions involve the emission of light of different colors, creating the colorful atmospheric showers called northern clouds. lights.”
ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS
According to the SWPC, G1 storms can cause weak fluctuations in the power grid and minor impacts on satellites. More powerful storms have a much greater impact on our planet and our infrastructure: G5 storms can cause such widespread voltage regulation problems that transformer damage can occur, and satellites may require more frequent orbital adjustments due to increased atmospheric drag.
The most powerful geomagnetic storm in history was the Carrington event in 1859, which caused fires in telegraph offices.
“During that most powerful Carrington event ever, there were reports of telegraph lines sparking from the voltages generated in them,” Alan Woodward, a computer science professor and space weather expert at the University of Surrey in Britain, previously told Newsweek.
“If that were to happen today, you can imagine how much electronic equipment we depend on and extrapolate how disruptive it is on Earth.”
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.