Telecommunication black-out a possibility in 2010: Scientist Ahmedabad, Jan. 28 (PTI): Come the year 2010 and flares from the Sun could cause a telecommunication black-out forcing mobile phones and navigational systems to go off, says a leading scientist.
As 2010 approaches, more and more scientists around the world will be tuning their telescopes towards the Sun to try and detect sudden eruption of highly destructive solar flares which have the ability to cause a "telecommunication black-out" across the globe. "The solar flares are expected to be at its maximum intensity by the year 2010," said Markus Aschwanden, a solar physicists at the Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center (LMATC) in the United States of America. "These solar flares and Coronoal Mass Ejections (CME) from the Sun have the ability to travel all the way to the earth and create a black-out of cellular phone services and navigational systems like the GPS (Global Positioning System)," Aschwanden said on the sidelines of an international conference on 'Challenges of Solar Cycle-24' at Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) here. Solar flares and CMEs occur when magnetic energy built up in the Sun's atmosphere is suddenly released, he said. These flares carrying high amount of energy, travel at high speeds and reach the Earth in a matter of hours. It leaves little time to issue a warning, Aschwanden said adding, solar flares can emit several (10 raised to the power 32) ergs of energy. "Because of its ability to cause widespread damage on the Earth, more and more scientists are keen to understand the phenomemon inside the Sun which gives rise to such flares," he added. The frequency of the flares coincide with the Sun's 11-year cycle of solar activity. During periods of minimum activity, active regions on the Sun are small and rare and so, few solar flares are detected. These flares increase in number as the Sun approaches the maximum part of its cycle which is scheduled to be around the year 2010. "If a solar flare or a CME collides with the Earth, it can cause a geomagnetic storm," Aschwanden said, adding large geomagnetic storms have caused electrical power outages and damaged communication satellites. "A few years back, these solar flares have destroyed the satellite Galaxy 4," Aschwanden said referring to the sudden failure of the communication satellite which had caused widespread loss of pager service and numerous other communication outages in the United States in 1998. He said with the number of satellites orbiting the Earth increasing over the years, a repeat of such a phenomemon could lead to a "telecommunication blackout" across the globe. Increasingly, phones, televisions, radios, bank transactions, newspapers, credit card systems and the like depend on satellites. "One way of preventing the highly-charged energy particles in the flares from destroying our satellites is to switch off the power in them," he said. "This temporary shut down of satellites is similar to unplugging your television sets when lightining occurs," Aschwanden added. It is very important to save these expensive satellites and the lives of astronauts working on the International Space Station, the scientist remarked. http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/008200701280353.htm Vikas Kapoor, MSN ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Skype ID: dl_vikas Mobile: (+91) 9891098137. To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
