Blackouts

Netflix Inc.’s second live event—a cast reunion for the hit reality show “Love Is Blind”—was plagued by problems with its live stream Sunday night in what represents an early stumble for the streaming company as it tries to push into live programming. Shortly after the “Love Is Blind” event was scheduled to start at 8 p.m. ET the company said in a tweet that “Love is…late,” adding that the live show would be on in 15 minutes. Instead, many users experienced an outage that lasted more than an hour,…

For the second time in less than a week, the Indian Ocean region has become a target for solar disturbances. On April 6, a solar flare eruption disrupted GPS service and low-frequency radio waves resulting in a short-wave radio blackout in the region. And now, in the late hours of April 10, another eruption, this time an M2-class flare, occurred which resulted in blackouts over the Indian Ocean region and Australia. Notably, the geoeffective area for this blackout included India, Japan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and other…

The Earth might have lucked out on Wednesday when it narrowly escaped the incoming wave of a coronal mass ejection (CME) cloud and avoided a solar storm event. However, things took a turn for the worse towards the south on Thursday, April 6, when a newly formed sunspot exploded spewing out an M3-class solar flare. The flare was Earth-directed and the high radiation has affected the Indian Ocean region. Multiple south Asian countries including India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, China, Japan and South Korea have fallen into its…

Sun's activity has been rising in the past few months as we head further towards the peak of Solar Cycle 25. Although Solar Max isn't expected until 2024 or 2025, it has already resulted in dangerous solar activity such as solar flares, CME eruptions and solar storms hitting Earth, which have caused an impact. Just days ago, as many as 9 sunspot groups had been observed on the Earth-facing side of the Sun. One of them was sunspot AR3256 which was initially deemed to be stable, but it suddenly erupted.Solar flare…

A terrifying X-class solar flare has erupted on the Sun in the early hours today, March 29. The solar flare eruption occurred on the Earth-facing sunspot AR3256 and has caused strong shortwave radio blackouts in large regions of Australia, southeast Asia and New Zealand. This came after it was reported yesterday that as many as 9 sunspot groups have appeared on the Earth-facing side of the Sun. Forecasters had claimed that the sunspots seemed to be stable, but one of them unexpectedly exploded.The incident was reported…

Yesterday, it was reported that powerful bursts of coronal mass ejection (CME) clouds were released during a farside explosion on the Sun and some of it were deflected towards our planet due to shock waves. The resultant solar storm was found to peak at G2-class, which is considered a powerful event. The highly charged particles have ionized the atmosphere around the Arctic Circle and have caused a shortwave radio blackout condition. Check details.The incident was reported by SpaceWeather.com which noted in its website,…

The unrelenting Sun has exploded multiple times over the last weekend, between March 4 and 5, releasing powerful M-class solar flares. The solar flares exploded within the notorious sunspot AR3234 which has already been involved in at least two X-class flares and multiple M-class flares. The powerful radiation from the event caused radio blackouts in Australia and New Zealand. Now, to add to the worries, the coronal mass ejection (CME) released from the event is expected to strike the Earth on March 7. Know how much…

For the third time in less than a month, the American continents have become a victim of the extremely volatile ongoing solar storm activity. The first event took place on February 18 when an X2.2-class solar storm struck North and South America. Then, another M8.6-class solar flare hit the continents on March 1. Now, the unstable sunspot AR3234 has exploded once again producing a powerful X2.1-class solar flare. It was detected by the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). This massive eruption sparked shortwave radio…

The Earth is being constantly bombarded by solar storms this week. On February 26 and 27, two consecutive coronal mass ejection (CME) clouds struck the Earth, with the latter being recorded as a highly intense G3-class solar storm which caused auroras to be displayed as south as Colorado, delayed a SpaceX rocket launch and caused oil rigs to be stopped in Canada. And yesterday, the unstable sunspot AR3234 again exploded resulting in a M8.6 class solar flare eruption. It was detected by the NASA Solar Dynamics…

Image: Lipowski Milan (Shutterstock)Governments in 35 countries shut down the internet for a record total of at least 185 times in 2022 alone, a new study shows. The New York-based watchdog group, Access Now, published the report on Tuesday noting that the rate of online shutdowns has not only skyrocketed but is lasting longer and are often targeting the populations during times when it is needed the most. Access Now launched its Keep It On campaign in 2016, and has found that India accounted for nearly half of the…