A large solar flare may strike Earth soon as a massive sunspot has been detected last weekend.
According to spaceweather.com, the sunspot in question, designated AR3038, appeared “big” on Sunday, but became truly “enormous” by Monday, “having doubled in size” in 24 hours.
“AR3038 has an unstable 'beta-gamma' magnetic field that harbors energy for M-class solar flares, and it is directly facing Earth,” the website notes.
As New York Post points out, however, while the M-class solar flare is the second-strongest type of such events, it would likely result only in a short radio blackout.
“Solar flares can temporarily alter the upper atmosphere creating disruptions with signal transmission from, say, a GPS satellite to Earth causing it to be off by many yards,” NASA explained back in 2013, pointing out that the “explosive heat of a solar flare can't make it all the way to our globe”.