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03/30 16:28 Solar Flares Could Hit Earth's Cell Phones, Pagers This Weekend By Bill Murray

Washington, March 30 (Bloomberg) -- The biggest sunspot in 10 years is triggering solar flares that are hurling clouds of electrified gas toward Earth, creating vivid aurora displays and possible disruptions to satellite and radio communications this weekend, according to NASA.

The ionized electrons and protons can interrupt satellite- operated global positioning systems, cell phone communications and pager services if the solar energy collides with Earth's magnetic field with little warning. The latest events, however, were tracked early on U.S. government satellites, giving technicians at satellite companies time to prepare.

``The most common thing is that they can shut off some of their transponders and star trackers and just be ready to recover if they get funny commands that start to have a negative impact on the satellite,'' said Gary Heckman, a space weather forecaster at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colorado.

The most recent solar eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, yesterday fired out high-speed electrified gas expected to impact the Earth's magnetic field tomorrow. Such ejections travel as fast as 1,250 miles per second. Its impact on satellite technology is expected to be light, Heckman said.

Force of Flares

Solar flares are capable of releasing as much energy as a billion megatons of TNT, according to NASA. A megaton is equal to a million metric tons of TNT. By contrast, the energy unleashed by the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in World War II was equivalent to about 15,000 tons of TNT.

Observers are continuing to watch the sun for more activity because of the presence of a sunspot more than 13 times as large as the Earth's surface and growing, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said in a statement. Sunspots, which appear as darker areas on the surface of the sun, are indicators of distorted magnetic activity that scientists think are precursors to huge solar flares.

The number of sunspots and solar activity increase and decrease as the sun's 11-year cycles of stormy activity rise and fall. The current high season will continue for a couple more years, Heckman said.

Two operating NASA research satellites, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and the Advanced Composition Explorer have bolstered NOAA's ability to anticipate solar weather, Heckman said.

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-- Carl Jenkins (somewherepress@aol.com), March 30, 2001