Tecass24 Jul 2018 19:32
Better look out next week then !!!!!
Hot gases are surging from a hole in the Sun's atmosphere, sending powerful solar winds full of charged particles through space and towards our planet.
These winds may build to a minor geomagnetic storm between 2 p.m. ET and 5 p.m. ET on Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts. But what is a geomagnetic storm, and what does it mean for people on Earth?
Geomagnetic storms are disturbances of our planet's magnetosphere—a bubble of space around Earth that's influenced by its magnetic field. Solar wind can interfere with this bubble as energy transfers from the wind to the magnetosphere.
"The magnetosphere can capture some of the particles escaping from the sun, storing them and energy in the space around the Earth," University College London space plasma physicist Colin Forsyth told Newsweek. ​"When the fast solar wind from a coronal hole hits the Earth, it compresses the magnetosphere and adds even more energy into it."
This powerful space weather can morph the magnetosphere's currents and distort its fields.