EUROPE: Our technology-dependent society is facing a dangerous threat from the solar storms or geomagnetic storms. According to scientists, solar storms can directly disrupt the communication and power networks of the planet. They added that such disturbances have occurred in the past.
Once, the Colaba observatory in India found the biggest, most powerful solar storm ever recorded that led to power outages in telegraph system facilities across North America and Europe in 1859. The Carrington event was given name after the astronomer Richard Carrington who witnessed the phenomenon. The event was also witnessed at places in low latitudes like the Caribbean Sea and Madrid.
Then in 2003, Hungary’s Tihany Magnetic Observatory once recorded a solar storm similar to the Carrington Event. The event was called as the Halloween Solar Storm by astronomers. The occurrence was not noticed by other observatories.
Now, scientists believe that most of the detection systems fail to detect geomagnetic perturbations from the Sun. As per astronomers from the University of Alcala, the present indices that scientists use in accessing solar storms may have had led to miscalculations.
The Dst (Disturbance storm time) is used by scientists for the collection of the average data recorded at observatories in San Juan (Puerto Rico), Honolulu (Hawaii, USA), Kakioka (Japan) and Hermanus (South Africa) every hour. The other version used by scientists is the SYM-H (Symmetric disturbance field in H), which examines the horizontal part of Earth’s magnetic field.
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