I saw in the news last night that the earth will be is currently experiencing a geomagnetic storm, more commonly known as “solar storm” or “solar radiation”. Will this have an effect on mobile phones and gadgets?
A solar storm, according to Wikipedia, is:
caused by a solar wind shock wave and/or cloud of magnetic field which interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field. The increase in the solar wind pressure initially compresses the magnetosphere and the solar wind magnetic field will interact with the Earth’s magnetic field and transfer an increased amount of energy into the magnetosphere. Both interactions cause an increase in movement of plasma through the magnetosphere (driven by increased electric fields inside the magnetosphere) and an increase in electric current in the magnetosphere and ionosphere.
So its a normal thing that the sun emits solar wind shock waves (solar flares) and such waves reach the earth. But as news reports say, A powerful solar flare called a coronal mass ejection occurred on the sun Sunday night and has sent a burst of radiation in the form of protons toward Earth and that this “radiation storm is the largest of its kind since 2005″.
Effect on Mobile phones.
It seems that mobile phones will not be adversely affected as only High frequency (HF) (radio frequencies are between 3 and 30 MHz) are the ones which will have some problems during the “storm”.
Image from NOAA
The only answer I found when I searched for the effects of solar storm and geomagnetic storm to mobile phones is that it will affect GPS (Global positioning system) on mobile phone. But most mobile phone users don’t normally use GPS.
SpaceWeather.com ranks the geomagnetic storm as an S3 (STRONG) and these are the effects based on the NOAA space weather scale:
Biological: radiation hazard avoidance recommended for astronauts on EVA; passengers and crew in high-flying aircraft at high latitudes may be exposed to radiation risk. (High energy particle measurements (>100 MeV) are a better indicator of radiation risk to passenger and crews. Pregnant women are particularly susceptible)
Satellite operations: single-event upsets, noise in imaging systems, and slight reduction of efficiency in solar panel are likely.
Other systems: degraded HF radio propagation through the polar regions and navigation position errors likely.
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