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A strong geomagnetic storm is racing from the Sun toward Earth, and its arrival on Thursday could affect power grids, airplane routes and space-based satellite navigation systems, U.S. space weather experts said.
The storm, a big cloud of charged particles flung from the Sun at about 4.5 million miles per hour (7.2 million km per hour), was spawned by a pair of solar flares, scientists said.
This is probably the strongest such event in nearly six years, and is likely more intense than a similar storm in late January, said Joseph Kunches, a space weather specialist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
IN PICTURES: Solar flares and Northern Lights
Such stormy space weather is unusual in recent history, according to Harlan Spence, an astrophysicist at the University of New Hampshire who is principal investigator on the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER) aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
"These relatively large (solar) events, which we've had maybe a couple of handfuls total in the course of a decade, we've now
A strong geomagnetic storm is racing from the Sun toward Earth, and its arrival on Thursday could affect power grids, airplane routes and space-based satellite navigation systems, U.S. space weather experts said.
The storm, a big cloud of charged particles flung from the Sun at about 4.5 million miles per hour (7.2 million km per hour), was spawned by a pair of solar flares, scientists said.
This is probably the strongest such event in nearly six years, and is likely more intense than a similar storm in late January, said Joseph Kunches, a space weather specialist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
IN PICTURES: Solar flares and Northern Lights
Such stormy space weather is unusual in recent history, according to Harlan Spence, an astrophysicist at the University of New Hampshire who is principal investigator on the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER) aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
"These relatively large (solar) events, which we've had maybe a couple of handfuls total in the course of a decade, we've now
