If Earth's communication is hit in coming days, blame the sun

Like most stars, the sun has a mercurial temperament. There are periods when it is (relatively) quiet and those when it sees sharp increases in activity. Oddly enough, the more advances we make technologically, the more vulnerable we are to the sun’s moods.

The next few days will see a certain amount of stress-testing for the world’s satellites and hence, our communication and geo-location systems could be affected as the sun is going through a stormy period.

On March 13, a large solar flare was released, and it travelled towards Earth at around 600 km per second. It led to