BlankSolar storm heading for Earth By Doyle Rice USA TODAY A solar flare 
that launched off the sun Wednesday afternoon could wreak havoc with 
communications systems and power systems on the Earth, as well as with 
satellites in orbit, in coming days. Forecasters with NOAA's Space Weather 
Prediction Center said the flare already "caused impacts to high-frequency 
radio communications on Earth today," according to NOAA. "A coronal mass 
ejection (CME) associated with this event is likely, but further analysis is 
necessary to determine whether it will produce geomagnetic storming on 
Earth. A coronal mass ejection contains billions of tons of energetic 
hydrogen and helium ions as well as protons and electrons ejected from the 
sun's surface. If a CME occurred, Earth's magnetosphere will likely be 
disturbed and a geomagnetic storm could result in the next few days, NOAA 
reports. NOAA space weather forecaster Bill Murtagh said that scientists 
will know more about when and where the impacts will be when more data comes 
in later Wednesday and early Thursday. The flare is on the high end of the 
solar flare scale. One nice side effect of the solar storm is an expansion 
of the photogenic aurora borealis, or Northern Lights, across Canada and the 
northern U.S. The Northern Lights appear when atoms in the Earth's 
high-altitude atmosphere collide with energetic charged particles from the 
sun. They usually appear as shimmering green waves of light in the nighttime 
sky in polar latitudes. Much more rarely, they can be red and even blue.