A U.S. government agency that monitors solar activity said on Saturday (May 11) that the biggest geomagnetic storm in two decades would continue through Sunday. - REUTERS
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00:00 Wow.
00:01 The biggest geomagnetic storm in two decades resulted in dazzling lights displays across
00:07 large swaths of the northern hemisphere over the weekend.
00:11 Curtains of green, pink and purple lights known as the Northern Lights or the Aurora
00:15 Borealis could be seen around the world from Russia to the United States, as well as in
00:21 parts of Latin America, including a rare appearance in Mexico.
00:25 The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration described the event as extreme
00:31 and warned on Saturday that the solar storm could pose risks to radio, GPS and satellite
00:37 communications.
00:38 But Volker Boatmaier, a leading astrophysicist at the University of Göttingen in Germany,
00:44 said that while the solar storm is strong, it's not powerful enough to cause significant
00:49 disruptions.
00:50 "In the consequences of an extreme storm, you can have a lot of problems with the technology,
00:57 infrastructure, communication, navigation systems and so on.
01:01 But this storm was not so extreme that we really have to fear of any severe damages."
01:09 Still, Elon Musk's satellite internet operation, Starlink, warned on Saturday of degraded service.
01:16 Musk said earlier in a post on X that Starlink satellites orbiting Earth were under a lot
01:21 of pressure but were holding up so far.
01:25 Geomagnetic storms are caused when explosions of plasma and magnetic fields from the sun's
01:30 corona are directed at Earth.
01:32 The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the current geomagnetic storm is likely
01:37 to continue through Sunday.