Come the year 2010 and flares from the sun could cause a telecommunication blackout forcing mobile phones and navigational systems to go off, says a leading scientist.
As 2010 approaches, more and more scientists around the world will be tuning their telescopes towards the sun to try and detect sudden eruption of highly destructive solar flares which have the ability to cause a "telecommunication blackout" across the globe, Zeenews reported.
"The solar flares are expected to be at its maximum intensity by the year 2010," said Markus Aschwanden, a solar physicist at the Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Centre (LMATC) in the United States of America.
"These solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) from the sun have the ability to travel all the way to the earth and create a blackout of cellular phone services and navigational systems like the GPS (Global Positioning System)", Aschwanden said.
Solar flares and CMEs occur when magnetic energy built up in the sun`s atmosphere is suddenly released, he said. These flares carrying high amount of energy, travel at high speeds and reach the earth in a matter of hours.
It leaves little time to issue a warning, Aschwanden said adding solar flares can emit several (10 raised to the power 32) ergs of energy.
"Because of its ability to cause widespread damage on the earth, more and more scientists are keen to understand the phenomenon inside the sun which gives rise to such flares," he added.
These flares increase in number as the sun approaches the maximum part of its cycle, which is scheduled to be around the year 2010. Increasingly, phones, televisions, radios, bank transactions, newspapers, credit card systems and the like depend on satellites.
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