Bombardment by powerful solar storms in 2024

Earth is set to face a bombardment of powerful solar storms, with scientists predicting a ‘solar maximum’ in 2024. These ‘fireballs’ are expected to be powerful enough to knock out the world’s internet for weeks.

Indian researchers expect the solar maximum to reach in 2024 and “paralyze” the world’s Internet for weeks, and approximately every 11 years, the sun experiences a so-called “solar maximum” and leads to solar storms.

These sunspots – which are sometimes clustered into islands – appear due to large shifts in the Sun’s magnetic field. They can release powerful bursts of energy, creating solar storms that can damage satellites and mess with the Internet.

The latest prediction comes from a team of Indian researchers and differs from NASA’s latest prediction, which is expected to occur in late 2025.

doctor. The new study was led by Dibyendu Nandy, a physicist at the IISER Kolkata Center of Excellence in Space Science in India. According to him, it is too early to know the strength of solar storms and their effects, but we are likely to learn more as the new year approaches.

“More severe storms can sometimes lead to catastrophic orbital fragmentation of low-Earth orbit satellites and disrupt satellite-based services such as communications and navigation networks,” the physicist told Mail Online.

“They can also cause strong disturbances in the geomagnetic field that activate energy grids located in high latitude regions. “Of course, they also create beautiful aurora, so we can expect 2024 to be a good year for aurora hunters,” he added.

The challenge of forecasting extreme space weather

Scientists report that knowing exactly when this peak will occur, and thus when more extreme space weather will impact Earth, has been difficult.

We know that solar cycles typically occur every 11 years, but Dr. Nandy explains that this is just an average.

Using their new knowledge, scientists used their new understanding to predict exactly when the solar maximum of the current cycle will reach its peak.

“Predicting the time of maximum exposure of the sunspot cycle is important for measuring when the worst space environmental conditions (space weather) are expected to occur,” the researchers said.