The Swedish civil aviation authority claim that a solar storm knocked out the tune traffic controller system in the country on Wednesday afternoon , and it was forced to close its airspace for over an hour .
According to the aviation officials , the solar storm created enough hurly burly in the Earth ’s magnetic field to stop the radar system working right .
Per Froberg , the spokesperson for Luftfartsverket ( the Swedish Civil Aviation Administration ) , tell theAssociated Pressthat flights evaporate from radar screens across Sweden . The radiolocation blackout lasted for about an hour , but there is yet no account on why it was so spartan .
" We ’re working on sorting out the delays . We ca n’t examine the suit decently now . We have our hands full , " Mr Froberg added .
Neighboring state such as Denmark and Finland did n’t describe any problem in their ground orchestration . " There have n’t been any disturbances . Only a few delays in Copenhagen because of the problems in Stockholm , " Mette Just of Naviair , Denmark ’s tune navigation help , secernate the Associated Press .
And Juha - Pekka Luntama – head of the European Space Agency ’s Space Weather Coordination Centre – recite IFLScience it was too early to blame a solar storm for the blackout .
“ I think the event in Sweden yesterday was very interesting and we should wait for the technical psychoanalysis from the Swedish authorities before making any determination , ” he say . “ In my thought the solar flair yesterday was not very strong and thus impacts in the air traffic control radar system in Sweden were unexpected . ”
He continued : " Theoretically this kind of disturbance is potential , but these outcome are very rare and they would involve a substantial radiocommunication burst from the Sun . Unexpected impact may , of course of instruction , be possible when many inputs combine in the worst potential fashion . However , I would expect that other technological reasons will be identified as the chief course for the radiolocation job . [ Although ] it is still possible that the solar flash was somehow one of the contributing factors . ”
Solar storms happen when material from the Sun interact strongly with the magnetic field of the Earth . The strongest interactions are due to seismic disturbance waves in the solar farting ( a stream of electrically turn on particles constantly being emit by the Sun ) , which are produced when eruption from the solar surface are suddenly flung into distance by freak magnetised case .
Solar storms can be very dangerous . One of the most vivid solar storms in recent days was theHalloween Solar Stormof 2003 , which caused an hour - farsighted blackout in Sweden . The strongest solar storm on record , the Carrington event , happened in 1859 . It was creditworthy for aurorae from the pole to the tropics as well as set telegraph stations on fervour across Europe and the United States . If it had happen today , it could grow trillions of dollars of damages in theU.S. alone .
