Intense solar flares to damage satellites, communications systems

Russian geophysical forecast center said it expects powerful solar flares, vast explosions in the sun's atmosphere around sunspots, to occur in the near future - December 9.

The magnetic storm is expected to harm health of people, causing nervous instability and insomnia.

Solar flares can expel billion-ton clouds of electrified gas or plasma into space at a speed of one million miles per hour. Eruptions from the sun can damage satellites and disrupt electrical and communications systems on the Earth.

"An X9 solar flare was registered last Tuesday. Over 30 years of regular X-ray observations of the sun, only about 25 powerful flares have been registered, and they had never previously been observed in the solar minimum [the lowest point of the sun’s 11-year activity cycle]. This is surprising, because normally such flares occur at the peak of the sun’s activity," the center said.

Azerbaijan national Academy of Science's Physics Institute informed that people are not expected to be so much affected by the two-day magnetic storm, APA reports.