NASA, the American space agency has warned that potentially dangerous solar storms could hit the earth in the coming days, causing widespread problems to technologies like power grids, internet service and GPS navigation.
As per experts, the sun is now in a solar minimum, and it is expected to remain in this phase for at least 11 years.
However, when the solar minimum ends, the sun will start kicking back on life at the earth with full vengeance, and it will send out massive solar flares. Scientists believe that the solar flares produced by the sun during the initial days of solar maximum will be very powerful, and it will result in dreaded repercussions.
A few days back, NASA released a video that featured an erupting solar flare from the sun's surface. This video captured in 2011 during the previous solar maximum shows how dangerous and deadly these waves are.
"The dramatic explosion was captured in ultraviolet light in the featured time-lapse video covering 90 minutes, where a new frame was taken every 24 seconds. The scale of the prominence is huge -- the entire Earth would easily fit under the flowing curtain of hot gas. A solar prominence is channelled and sometimes held above the Sun's surface by the Sun's magnetic field. After our Sun passes the current Solar Minimum, a solar activity like eruptive prominences are expected to become more common over the next few years," wrote NASA on their website.
Apart from disrupting technologies like GPS and internet services, massive solar flares could even cause several other serious problems on the earth. Increased current in the earth's magnetic field could result in a surge of electricity in power lines which can blow out power stations grids.
It was long back in 1859 that earth was previously hit by a very dangerous solar storm. However, during those times, humans were not that dependent on technologies for their existence. But now, things have dramatically changed, and modern humans are not even capable of imagining a single day without electricity and internet. If such a massive storm once again reaches the planet, the result will be complete carnage.
