At the beginning of the week and yesterday, the most powerful explosions of the past year occurred on the Sun, accompanied by eruptions in the star’s coronal mass. Our planet was shaken by a series of five simultaneous solar plasma emissions and an X-ray burst late yesterday evening. “Starlink satellites are under attack, but we can only hold out so far”, – Elon Musk wrote on the X network. Energy networks on the ground were also under attack.

The Sun is heading towards the next peak of its 11-year activity, and this time it could happen sooner; Not until mid-2025, but fall 2024. This period is characterized by the frequent appearance of spots on the Sun that cause strong flares in the X-ray range, and may also be accompanied by emissions of the coronal mass, which is a plasma cloud of the star’s matter.

Each of these events affects the magnetosphere of our planet and generally causes interruptions in shortwave radio communications, the induction of direct current in power lines and long metal structures – pipelines and railway tracks. As consolation, humanity continues to observe the colorful aurora borealis, which moves further and further towards the southern regions of the Earth with the increasing activity of the Sun.

On the night of May 11, the magnetic storm on Earth reached G5, an extreme strength level that promises to be the most severe event of its kind since October 2003. It later caused power outages in Sweden and damaged transformers in South Africa. Maybe there will be failures this time too. Meanwhile, Elon Musk complained on social network X (formerly Twitter) that Starlink Internet satellites are under pressure, although they are holding out for now. A magnetic storm could obviously disrupt communication with it and cause malfunctions in navigation systems.

There is also a great danger that the ionosphere, swelling under the influence of magnetic disturbances, will block satellites in low orbit more strongly, causing them to fall out of orbit and fall to Earth. In the past, this has already happened with satellites of the Starlink network.

According to the Institute of Applied Geophysics (IPG) of the Russian Federation, the level of the storm reached the G5 indicator in two consecutive three-hour periods from 00:00 to 06:00 Moscow time. Since new extremely intense explosions occurred on the Sun on Friday, the magnetic storm on Earth will last throughout the weekend and may include the first days of the new week. But scientists were most impressed by a series of successive coronal mass ejections, as if from a machine gun, whose impact on the Earth was difficult to predict due to their close interaction with each other. Such an event is very rare and therefore has not been adequately investigated.