According to the Fox News website, in the early morning of the 11th local time, Musk, CEO of SpaceX, released a message on social media platforms saying that when the geomagnetic storm hit, thousands of satellites in the low earth orbit of the company's "Starlink" network were "under a lot of pressure, but currently withstanding".
Musk warned that the Starlink network is experiencing a "service degradation," but did not provide further details. It is reported that "Starlink" is a major participant in the satellite Internet, accounting for about 60% of the number of satellites orbiting the earth in the world, and it uses an inter-satellite laser link to transmit data to each other in space at the speed of light, so that the network can cover the whole world. If satellites are affected, navigation and communication services on Earth may be disrupted.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States issued a very strong geomagnetic storm warning on the 10th, which is the highest level of geomagnetic storm warning issued by the agency since October 2003. Geomagnetic storms of this magnitude can affect power grids, satellites, and communications facilities, and even cause failures.
What are geomagnetic storms, solar flares? Why do they happen? Does it have an impact on the lives of ordinary people? The reporter interviewed Han Dayang, senior engineer of the Space Weather Technology R&D Office of the National Space Weather Monitoring and Warning Center of the China Meteorological Administration, to interpret the relevant issues that people are concerned about.
Why are geomagnetic storms and solar flares so frequent recently? Is it normal?
Han Dayang explained that it is normal for geomagnetic storms and solar flares to occur frequently in the near future. Statistics show that there have been three geomagnetic storms since May, namely May 3 and May 6, and the geomagnetic storm process that is still continuing from 23 o'clock on May 10. There are even more solar flares, and in just over 10 days since May, there have been more than 10 X-class flares and more than 60 M-class flares.
"Judging from the current trend of solar activity, the possibility of geomagnetic storms and solar flares in the near future is relatively high." Han Dayang said.
In the early morning of May 11, photographers photographed the aurora in Altay, Xinjiang
It generally has no impact on the lives of ordinary people, does not affect physical health, and does not require special protection
Will geomagnetic storms and solar flares have an impact on our lives? Experts responded that geomagnetic storms and solar flares will only have some impact on high-tech industries such as aviation and communications, and generally have no impact on the lives of ordinary people, nor will they affect their health, let alone special protection.
Experts explain that solar flares are similar to sunlight, except that their energy is many orders of magnitude stronger. "When a flare occurs, the ionosphere wrapped outside the Earth receives much more radiation than usual, and the rapid movement of air particles causes the density and structure of the ionosphere to change, and the radio wave signals that should be reflected back to the ground are affected." The phenomenon of short-wave absorption due to ionospheric disturbance has brought problems such as signal loss and deterioration of communication quality to short-wave communication commonly used in modern aviation, navigation and other fields.
When a geomagnetic storm occurs, the atmosphere in high latitudes is heated and expands under the action of Joule heating and high-energy particle deposition, and transmits this change to the world with the atmospheric circulation, causing the density of the upper atmosphere to rise, creating greater flight resistance for artificial spacecraft operating at orbital altitudes below 500 kilometers, and causing obvious attenuation of their orbits, which is called atmospheric drag in spaceflight. Another type of effect is that the occurrence of geomagnetic storms causes changes in geomagnetic information, making pigeons easy to get lost during the flight, resulting in the loss of carrier pigeons.
For the average person, the impact of geomagnetic storms is very weak and completely negligible. Regarding the impact of space weather activities on some industries, the National Space Weather Monitoring and Warning Center of the China Meteorological Administration has been working closely with relevant industry departments for a long time to discuss countermeasures and mitigation strategies for different technical systems.
Source: CCTV Finance and Economics, People's Daily Editor: Ruowen Editor: Lai Ting Review: Lu Hongmei
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