NASA ALERT! Earth is due to hit on Friday

The solar flare has a temperature of about 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit and prompted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to issue an alert on Monday warning of possible disruptions to Earth’s radio systems.

Radio blackouts could cripple global systems again this week as NASA predicts an eruption of dark plasma from the sun.

The solar flare is estimated to be about 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit and prompted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to issue an alert on Monday warning of possible disruption to Earth’s radio systems, including aviation communications and satellite operations.

It is expected to cause the most disruption on Friday, just days after a global IT outage caused by a Crowdstrike outage caused chaos at airports around the world. NOAA said weak power grid fluctuations may occur and added that the Aurora may be visible in high latitudes such as Canada and Alaska.

Largest solar flare ever

In December, a NASA telescope captured the largest solar flare in years, which temporarily disrupted radio communications on Earth.

The huge eruption, along with a massive radio burst, caused two hours of radio interference in parts of the US and other parts of the world. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it was the largest flare of 2017, and the radio burst was extensive, affecting even high frequencies.

The combination resulted in one of the largest solar radio events ever recorded, Shawn Dahl of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center said Friday, according to The Mirror.

Several pilots reported communications outages, with the impact being felt across the country, according to the space weather forecast center.

Scientists are now monitoring this sunspot region and scanning it for a possible burst of plasma from the sun, also known as a coronal mass ejection, that could be headed for Earth.

That could lead to a geomagnetic storm, Dahl said, which in turn could disrupt high-frequency radio signals at higher latitudes and trigger auroras, or auroras, in the coming days.

What are solar flares?

Solar flares are large bursts of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun that last from a few minutes to a few hours.

The sudden burst of electromagnetic energy travels at the speed of light, so any effect on the sunlit part of Earth’s exposed outer atmosphere occurs at the same time the event is observed.

The increased level of X-ray and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) radiation leads to ionization of the lower layers of the ionosphere on the sunlit side of the Earth.

Solar flares usually occur in active regions, which are areas on the Sun marked by the presence of strong magnetic fields; they are usually associated with groups of sunspots. As these magnetic fields evolve, they can reach a point of instability and release energy in a variety of forms. These include electromagnetic radiation, which is observed in the form of solar flares.