SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - It may sound like science fiction, but it's not. Waves of radiation are heading towards earth.
The Aurora Borealis light up the northern sky thanks to a very active sun, but behind the beautiful northern lights is something that had scientists watching closely. A solar eruption Sunday, the largest in 8 years, sent waves of radiation towards earth.
Director of the Clark Planetarium, Seth Jarvis said, "The sun is sending stuff like this out all the time, the only problem with this particular ejection is that it was headed right at earth."
We can't feel the radiation, but when it hits our plant's magnetic field it can disrupt communications and air travel. A spokesperson at AT&T says it’s been business as usual.
Ben Spilker said, "From what we have everything is going normally. We haven't experienced any problems."
Tuesday delta airlines rerouted several trans-polar flights. The new flight plan avoided the North Pole delaying flights by about 15 minutes. But the fallout wasn't as bad ten years ago when a solar eruption caused power outages in eastern Canada.
“You had thousands of people lose electricity in the houses because all the power lines sucked up the electromagnetic energy,” said Jarvis.
A decade later our satellites seem to be better prepared; going into sleep mode or shutting down circuits till the solar eruption passes. If our satellites weren't prepared the disruption could have been a lot worse.
Jarvis said, "It could disrupt GPS, global transmission and your banking balance, because of satellite connection, to tell you how much money you have on your credit card that could be disrupted but that hasn’t happened.”
