Wednesday 8th February 2012
Satellite Navigation
Wednesday 10th February 2010 16:20
Solar flares: may cause GPS blackouts
Image from NASA
The sun is awakening from a period of low activity and could wreak havoc on GPS systems all over the world, according to UK scientists. Increased surface radiation and solar flares will cause signal blackouts and inaccuracies.
Ben Cockshott, a director at Digital Systems Knowledge Transfer Network, said: “The problem will be more troublesome than dangerous.”
Scientists at Cornell University in New York predicted this could happen in 2006. Their findings said that we could see a 90 percent signal drop for a few hours.
