A huge sunspot unleashed a blob of charged plasma Thursday that space weather watchers predict will blast past the Earth on Sunday. Satellite operators and power companies are keeping a close eye on the incoming cloud, which could distort the Earth's magnetic field and disrupt radio communications, especially at higher latitudes. “Our simulations show potential to pack a good punch to Earth's near-space environment,” said Antti Pulkkinen of the Space Weather Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. But, he added, “We're not looking at an extreme event here.” The front edge of the burst should arrive Sunday morning, said Joseph Kunches, a spokesman for the Space Weather Prediction Center, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colo. “At first glance, it was at the center of the [sun's] disk, it ought to go right to the Earth,' ” Kunches said. But upon further review and “head-scratching” Thursday, NOAA's space weather team calculated that most of the plasma blob should pass harmlessly over the top of our planet.
