Electronics Beware: Sun Headed for 'Solar Max'

Buckle up, earthlings. You might be in for some sun-induced turbulence. According to the AFP, the sun is preparing to enter the most active part of its cycle known as "solar max."

Side effects of this phenomenon can include malfunctioning telecom and GPS satellite equipment.

The sun goes through cycles of high activity and relative calm, rather than burning with consistent force. Observed for about two centuries, sunspots are a hallmark of the point of highest activity. Cycles last 11 years on average, but the current period, which began in 1996, has taken longer than usual to reach solar max.

However, the AFP said that the sun is waking up and headed toward its cycle's climax.

"The latest prediction looks at around midway 2013 as being the maximum phase of the solar cycle," Joe Kunches from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center told the AFP.

Kunches said that a pair of seasons of heavy activity lasting about two and a half years each bookend solar max. This means people should prepare for what could be some crazy, solar-charged weather.

"At its angriest, the Sun can vomit forth tides of electromagnetic radiation and charged matter known as coronal mass ejections, or CMES," said the AFP report.

Although CMEs might take days to actually reach the earth, their charges could knock out vital electronics on the blue planet.

Another one of the side effects of solar max are super-charged protons, or flares, from the sun that could hit the earth "in just minutes," the AFP said.

Telecom and GPS satellites are among the most vulnerable to the Sun's wrath. A Canadian telecommunications satellite was crippled for five months by a CME in 1994, and in April of this year, a communications vessel for North America was disabled by the same phenomenon. In another instance, GPS communications were knocked out for about 10 minutes by solar weather in 2005.

It's not just satellites that are prone to solar attack, but also "power lines, data connections, and even oil and gas pipelines," said the AFP.

Scientists use back-up systems and shields to protect from these outages, but not all of it can be predicted.

"There's a lot we don't know about the sun," Kunches said. "Even in the supposedly declining, or quiet phase, you can have magnetic fields on the Sun that get very concentrated and energized for a time, and you can get, out of the blue, eruptive activity that is atypical. In short, we have a variable star.