An explosion on the sun has caused a massive plume of energized particles to soar through space at a speed of 900,000mph, triggering blackouts in Australia and South Asia. The event, which occurred on Monday, resulted in reports of disruptions to ham radio operators and mariners in the affected areas. The solar storm, released at 8:30pm ET, reached our planet today shortly after 10am ET. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center has indicated a 45 percent chance of further communication disruptions in the coming days.

Physicists have identified the explosion as an M-class flare, which can lead to small (R1) to moderate (R2) radio blackouts on the daylight side of the Earth. This alert primarily affects frequencies used by aviation communication, government time stations, weather stations, amateur radio, and citizens band services, among others. Dr. Tamitha Skov, a physicist, highlighted that those impacted are individuals who rely on GPS/GNSS services, especially at high latitudes, as well as precision farmers and users of UAVs for various purposes.

Strong M-class flares, such as the one observed on Monday, have the potential to launch a coronal mass ejection (CME), comprising large clouds of plasma and magnetic field that erupt from the sun. These ejections, containing billions of tons of corona material from the sun’s surface, can produce a geomagnetic storm, temporarily disrupting Earth’s magnetosphere and orbiting satellites due to a solar wind shock wave.