Solar Flares Could Seriously Disrupt GPS Receivers

Published on September 30th, 2007

Solar Flares Could Seriously Disrupt GPS Receivers — What makes this story interesting is that the USA and the rest of the world are all thinking about moving to GPS for all air traffic control.

A minor solar flare in September 2005 produced a noticeable degradation of all GPS signals on the day side of the Earth. When scaled up to the larger solar flares expected in 2011-12, Cornell researchers expect massive outages of all GPS receivers on the day side of the Earth.

14 users responded in " Solar Flares Could Seriously Disrupt GPS Receivers "

Subscribe to this post comment rss or trackback url

# 1 Greg Allen said, on September 30th, 2007 at 9:28 pm

This is a very good point — we ham radio operators are well aware of these solar flares and how they affect our hobby. If I remember right, one practically brought down the 10 meter band in 1989.

Solar flares don’t affect all frequencies the same (I’m not sure which the GPS broadcast on) so any air traffic control should have redundant systems.

Best would be to have one redundancy be non-radio. Could something be done with laser beacons from the ground maybe? Or maybe even from low flying satellites? Like a new high-tech form of the old light houses? (I’m just brainstorming here.)

# 2 Lauren the Ghoti said, on September 30th, 2007 at 9:37 pm

Tunnel Vision Alert:

The upcoming spike in solar activity is going to disrupt one Hell of a lot more than just GPS… the effects on most systems won’t be as severe as with GPS, but there’ll be a lot of it, and for quite a while.

# 3 Gary_in_WA said, on September 30th, 2007 at 9:42 pm

Doesn’t this fall under the “Duh!” category?

# 4 Brandon said, on September 30th, 2007 at 9:44 pm

Boy am I glad my enlistment ends in 2010, I would hate to have to support totally failing GPS units!

# 5 Scruffy Dan said, on September 30th, 2007 at 11:15 pm

one way some current receivers get around such inaccuracies is placing GPS receivers at known location and measuring and then rebroadcasting the difference between the known location and the measured location.

GPS receivers in the field will then have a good idea of the inaccuracies in he measured location and be able to apply a correction value to the measured location.

This tends to vastly increase the accuracy of of GPS receivers under ‘normal conditions’ considerably and wold likely also improve accuracy during solar flairs… i think

# 6 Mac Guy said, on October 1st, 2007 at 4:36 am

The real question is: will it finally kill Vista?

# 7 Charles Nicolosi said, on October 1st, 2007 at 4:39 am

ummm…isn’t the airline industry in the process of switching to some kind of GPS tracking system?

# 8 GigG said, on October 1st, 2007 at 5:47 am

Google the following

WAAS
LAAS
RAIM

Not to worry though. The FAA isn’t going to be sutting down the ground basied navigation system (VOR/ILS) any time soon.

# 9 MikeN said, on October 1st, 2007 at 5:59 am

And of course these flares have no affect on temperature.

# 10 Lauren the Ghoti said, on October 1st, 2007 at 9:29 am

And of course these flares’ effects on temperature have nothing to do with whether or not human contributions to greenhouse gasses are causing more of any resulting heat to be trapped in Earth’s atmosphere.

Thanks for the red herring, though.

# 11 Mike Voice said, on October 1st, 2007 at 10:50 am

5 one way some current receivers get around such inaccuracies is placing GPS receivers at known location and measuring and then rebroadcasting the difference between the known location and the measured location.

And those re-broadcast signals would be immune to degradation by the flare?

# 12 OhForTheLoveOf said, on October 1st, 2007 at 1:19 pm

#9 and #10 –

And of course these flares have no affect on temperature.

Comment by MikeN — 10/1/2007 @ 5:59 am

And of course these flares’ effects on temperature have nothing to do with whether or not human contributions to greenhouse gasses are causing more of any resulting heat to be trapped in Earth’s atmosphere.

Thanks for the red herring, though.

Comment by Lauren the Ghoti — 10/1/2007 @ 9:29 am

AND greenhouse gases heat the Earth because idiot leaders like George Bush keeps promoting the myth of Christianity and covering up for pedophile priests who secretly plant cameras in all our bathrooms for the NSA (which stands of Nazi States of America)…

Okay…

Is the thread hijacked yet?

# 13 Lauren the Ghoti said, on October 1st, 2007 at 7:12 pm

Nah. ‘Flares’ is the topic.

Next up: Railroad flares

• • • • • • •

#11 – Mike Voice

“And those re-broadcast signals would be immune to degradation by the flare?”

Well, they’d certainly be relayed on a very different band, one maybe not ‘immune’ but definitely less susceptible to serious disruption…

# 14 OmarTheAlien said, on October 1st, 2007 at 7:52 pm

Perfect Storm: Earth’s magnetic field collapses, Sun vomits solar flares ten AU’s (and bigger). All life on Earth (except cockroaches) perish, Earth heals across lonely centuries, brain eating amoeba come out of the seas, find no brains, starve to death, Earth and roaches happy.

Leave Your Reply Below...

Comment Moderation is Active, so if your comment doesn't
show up immediately, please don't submit it again.

Special Deals 4U

25% off eHarmony subscription with code EHTECH
12-percent discount forever with code TECH
10-percent discount and free month using TECH10
10-percent or 30 dollars off weekly car rental!
Get 10-percent discount on car rental!
Get 10% off rental cars!
Get 10% off Dollar rentals!
Discounts on domain names!