 | | | | | | | | | | |  |  | | | | Science: Solar storm disrupts communications">Archive of stories pre April 2007 | | | | | | | 
Archive of stories pre April 2007 | News submitted by: MIB
The most powerful geomagnetic storm possible has hit Earth, threatening power outages, disrupting airlines communications and damaging some satellites.
US space weather forecasters say the first pulse of highly charged particles from the Sun collided with Earth's magnetic field at 6am UK time on Wednesday, about 12 hours earlier than predicted.
The storm is rated a G5, the highest intensity on scientists' scale of space weather. The last time a G5 storm hit Earth was in 1989, researchers said, which damaged the power grid and caused electrical blackouts in Canada's Quebec Province.
"It is extremely rare to get this level of geomagnetic storming," said Larry Combs, forecaster for the Space Weather Centre. "This is one of the strongest storms that we have received during this cycle."
In Tokyo, Japan's space agency announced the Kodama communications satellite was temporarily shut down after being affected by the flare and would be reactivated after the storm subsided, but there was no major communication disruption.
There were few other immediate reports of damage, but Mr Combs said: "We know that our power grids are definitely feeling the effects of this." He added experts monitoring electrical grids are watching "very closely for their triggering devices".
He also noted that there had been radio communications disruptions in recent days for airlines, especially those on north Atlantic and polar routes. Another strong storm, although weaker than Thursday's, occurred last week.
The Sun generates particle storms in 11-year cycles and storms of this magnitude are rarely seen, scientists said. The current solar cycle peaked nearly three years ago.
The G5 storm was spawned early on Tuesday by a spectacular eruption from a sunspot that sent charged particles hurling toward Earth. The cloud is 13 times larger than Earth and travels at more than one million mph.
© Associated Press
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