A powerful solar flare caused a loss of communications over the Pacific Ocean

Satellites detected a massive solar flare with enough force to ionize part of the Earth’s atmosphere. The flare, designated X1.1, was released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center on Thursday, March 28. X-class flares are considered the most powerful events our Sun can generate.

SpaceWeather.com reports that the solar flare caused a “shortwave communications blackout over the Pacific Ocean” as it ionized Earth’s upper atmosphere.

Additionally, this flare was accompanied by a significant ejection of plasma called a coronal mass ejection (CME). NOAA scientists were concerned about the prospect of a CME impacting Earth, which could lead to a geomagnetic storm and affect satellites, radio communications and other infrastructure. However, NOAA announced Friday that the outbreak will likely not reach Earth.

This event comes on the heels of a “double” X-class flare on Monday, March 25, which caused the strongest geomagnetic storm to hit our planet in six years. This phenomenon is called a sympathetic solar flare and consists of two simultaneous explosions.

The succession of such powerful events has led scientists to speculate that the Sun may have entered an era of peak activity known as solar maximum, starting a year earlier than previous forecasts predicted. However, to give a full assessment of this phenomenon, you will have to wait until the sun “calms down.”

X-class flares occur most often during solar maximum, which is part of the 11-year solar cycle. So far, seven such powerful X-class flares have already been detected in 2024, while twice as many have been detected in all of 2023.