Niamh Shackleton
Solar flares released by the Sun could have a delayed effect on Earth.
On Tuesday (October 1), the Sun released two huge solar flares that caused temporary blackouts in large of the Pacific Ocean.
The two flares were launched within a few hours of each other, with the most recent being an X-class flare and hitting a magnitude of X7 - making it the second largest powerful solar explosion of the current solar cycle.
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Solar flares are ranked in different categories defending on how big they are: the smallest ones are B-class, followed by C, M and the largest being X.
"Similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes, each letter represents a ten-fold increase in energy output," adds NASA on its website.
The largest flare of the solar cycle that we're currently in (which lasts around 11 years) took place in May, which hit a magnitude of X8.9.
In addition to the flares causing brief blackouts, the event saw a geomagnetic storm known as coronal mass ejection (CME) launched into space - and it's this that may come back to cause more issues.
The CME is expected to come back towards Earth as early as Friday (October 4), according to spaceweather.com. The CME will bring a G3-class geomagnetic storm. For reference, a G5-class storm is the most extreme.
The website says of the upcoming events: "Fast-growing sunspot AR3842 erupted on Oct 1st (2220 UT), producing the second-strongest solar flare of Solar Cycle 25. The X7.1-category blast caused a shortwave radio blackout over Hawaii and hurled a faint halo CME into space.
"NOAA forecasters are predicting a strong G3-class geomagnetic storm when the CME arrives as early as Oct. 4th."
When storms like these hit Earth, they can disrupt navigation systems such as the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and create harmful geomagnetic induced currents (GICs) in the power grid and pipelines, as per NOAA.
They're also known to create beautiful aurora borealis to look at.
The more powerful the storm, the more likely it is to cause notable effects on Earth. If the strength of Tuesday's flare is anything to go off, then we could be in for a pretty big storm.
2024 has so far been huge for solar activity. Back in May, scientists were forced to issue a warning ahead of the biggest solar storm in nearly 20 years hit Earth.
There were a series of solar storms that month, but the only that got people talking was a G4 class event. G4 is seen as 'Severe', coming in second to an 'Extreme' G5 storm.
The NOAA at the time said it was 'very rare' for a G4 storm to occur and hailed it as an 'unusual event'.