Scientists say the Sun’s poles are about to flip. On Erath, poles are rarely changing their order. They flip every hundreds of thousands of years. But on the Sun, it’s fairly regular occurrence.
They flip in every 11 years. They last reversed in 2013 and it’s quite obvious that this will take place this year.
Scientists say it will be an epic transformation. But they also claim that it may be terrifying for us.
How will Sun’s poles shuffle and impact the Earth?
The solar eclipse is predicted in April this year. This happens with the Moon crosses paths with the Sun, blocking it from view. This is highly anticipated event for Scientists.
They are concerned with the one thing that it’s getting ready to flip. Just like Earth, it has two poles, South and North. Every eleven years, the polar magnetic fields weaken and go to Zero, then emerge again with much more energy with opposite polarity. So, the north pole becomes the south and vice versa. This is a regular path of the solar cycle unlike the one on the earth.
What comes before the Sun’s poles flip?
The Sun has intense magnetic activity. Currently, it is more active than it’s been in over a decade. It displays extra fireworks ejecting mass solar flares. Scientists call them Solar explosion. The charged particles come out of it and they shoot across the solar system at a speed of hundreds of thousands of miles per hour. These particles can reach the earth in typically 3 days.
The Earth has a magnetic field too, and it acts like an umbrella for the Earth. This magnetic field deflects the storm of these charged particles, like rain bouncing on umbrella. But sometimes the storm is so strong it reaps through the earth’s magnetic field and results can vary.
On the positive side, the northern lights will be stronger than they have been at least in a decade.
On the flip side, the solar storm can be a perfect storm for disaster. It can disrupt communication satellites (like the one observed recently – during Feb 4-6- when the powerful solar flare affected the radio communication badly across Southern Atlantic and Australia) and GPS in space and disable electrical grids on ground.
Such a hit is rare, but it can happen like it did in the year 1859. It was the worst solar storm in history. This Carrington Event destructed 200,000 kms of telegraph lines, hindered millions of messages, sparked hundreds of torrential fires, and the blood red aurora was witnessed in Mexico City. Similar incidents may happen now, and it could cause economic trillions.
But in most cases, this active time for the sun is not dangerous. It has more positives than negatives.
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