Sunspot, Earthquake and Your Communication Equipment
By Lawrence
Earlier this year NASA warned that solar flares and CME (coronal mass ejection) could be a problem starting summer. It turned out to be a quiet non-event summer with not much activities recorded. Well, our Sun obvious is a trickster and has just gear up to blast Earth with its solar flares this week.
The main sunspot causing all the latest very strong solar flares is going to turn away from Earth in about a week or two. If some of our satellite equipment on the sky are hit by strong solar flares they may be disabled for good. It has happened before so it can happen again.
Main issue with very strong solar flares (X class) is that they can also affect our communication on the ground indirectly due to its disruptive nature on magnetic fields. Most noticeable some internet connections depending on wireless cellphone network will be troubled. If you trade with wireless networks, be ready to switch to direct connections should this happens to your area.
Earthquakes and sunspots relationship has been a controversy subject for a long time. I am not saying there is a causation relationship between the two here (as I am no expert in those fields). I am just saying that there could be a coincidental relationship due to similar cycle length in solar activities (well known 11-year sunspot activity cycle) and Earth’s own seismic movement / pressure cycle (there may not be one). So far there are 10 earthquakes at 6.0 and above in Richter scale happening during this spike up in solar activity. That is way beyond normal, seasonally speaking.
Hopeful the earthquakes will stop soon.
Stay safe and good luck.
Notes: Feature image comes from Wikipedia. You can find it in the page on solar flare. It is a beautiful picture capturing a CME happened in August 2012 by NASA.
