Solar storm

Today, the intensity of the solar storm is low, and scientists say it will not have much impact on the earth.

On August 3, some Chinese and foreign media reported that "the solar storm will hit the earth today, which will lead to a global blackout", causing great concern from public opinion and panic among some netizens. To this end, our reporter interviewed Xue Bingsen, a researcher at the National Space Weather Monitoring and Early Warning Center. He said that according to the forecast, the solar storm may come tonight, but the level is low, and it will not have much impact on the earth, so the public need not panic.

Solar storm refers to a violent explosion on the sun, which releases a large number of charged particles to form a high-speed particle stream, seriously affecting the earth's space environment and interfering with the work and communication of wireless satellites. According to the monitoring of the National Space Weather Monitoring and Early Warning Center, the solar storm that appeared on August 3 was of C3.2, with low intensity and little impact on the earth. Xue Bingsen said that solar storms occur once a year with the sunspot activity cycle of1/kloc-0. At present, the sun is in a new growth cycle, but the current activity level is still very low. From the point of view of monitoring, only one sunspot group is seen on the solar sphere today.

Generally speaking, the intensity of the impact of solar storms on the earth is related to the intensity of the source of solar storms and whether the direction of solar storms is toward the earth. Xue Bingsen said that the probability of solar storms causing great damage to the earth in history is not high. 1989 the intensity of the solar storm that damaged the power supply systems in Quebec, Canada and New Jersey, USA was at least 100 times higher than this solar storm. At the same time, the monitoring data of the Space Weather Forecast Center in the United States is similar to that of China, but it is different from the solar observation results mentioned in some media reports.

With the popularity of the movie "20 12", people pay more and more attention to the solar storm. Xue Bingsen said that the treatment of solar storms should rely on more objective scientific basis and should not be blindly linked with events such as "the end of the world".