The Earth will soon be shaken by a solar storm, which could knock out some radio satellites.
A blast of solar particles is hurtling towards the sun at millions of miles per hour and will arrive either tonight or tomorrow morning.
This means the UK has a chance of seeing the northern lights, which happen when plasma interacts with Earth’s invisible magnetic field.
The Met Office has warned that the blast of charged particles could cause a ‘severe’ solar storm.
Forecasters have issued a yellow space weather warning, from 12.01am tomorrow to 11.59pm on Wednesday, for a G3 geomagnetic storm.
The alert states that while power outages can occur during such storms, space weather forecasters say that electricity being knocked out is unlikely.
Radio frequencies and GPS satellite navigation may be degraded for hours.
There is a risk that the storm could be more severe than expected, making it a G4 geomagnetic storm.
America’s space weather service, NOAA, also issued a warning for a G4 storm today.
It warns of ‘possible widespread voltage control problems and some protective systems may mistakenly trip out key assets from the power grid’.
The categories rate geomagnetic storms on a scale from G1 (minor) to G5 (extreme).
What is a solar storm?
Every now and then, the sun will cough out explosions of particles, called coronal mass ejections (CME).
These particles – protons, electrons and helium nuclei – travel millions of miles per hour through space.
If they hit Earth, their electrical currents and magnetic fields can damage satellites, mangle GPS signals and cause blackouts.
Met Office space weather manager Krista Hammond told Metro that the sun unleashed a CME yesterday.
While this barrage of charged particles was slated to hit Earth later tomorrow, space forecasters realised it was travelling faster than thought.
‘There is still some uncertainty around the exact timing of the CME’s arrival, but it is expected overnight tonight or tomorrow morning,’ Hammond said.
‘The CME is likely to result in geomagnetic storming, giving the potential to view the aurora.
‘However, sightings are dependent on the CME arriving during hours of darkness and clear skies.
‘Unfortunately, cloud and rain on Tuesday evening may make viewing difficult, even if the timing is favourable.’
Jim NR Dale, a meteorologist with the British Weather Services, told Metro that there is a lot of cloud over the UK tonight, ‘so it’ll be difficult to see’ the streams of red, blue and green.
Forecasts for solar storms are largely guesswork until the waves of particles reach two spacecraft, the NASA Advanced Composition Explorer and the Deep Space Climate Observator.
Both, however, are about one million miles away from Earth, giving the planet about an hour’s warning.
Monitoring service AuroraWatch UK is reporting ‘no significant activity’ at the time of writing.
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