Don't throw the map and compass away just yet....

What happened to Y2K and the Computers

[[[....was an unexpected solar radio burst on December 6 that affected virtually every GPS receiver on the lighted half of Earth.]]]

Garmins must be really good , I don't recall getting lost last December

Or don't travel to unknown places in 2011 if you rely on your GPS?

Mike, don't panic - yet. Apparently it's not quite the disaster some 'doomsdayers' would have us believe. In fact it sounds a bit like the hysteria that gripped some people at the beginning of the year 2000. This will most likely be only a short interruption - if at all. p.s. watch out for falling planes though !

....'Ok GPS fans, we're prepping you early for what could be a moment of pretty severe inconvenience in the not so distant future. Brace yourself, because in roughly five to six years, your beloved handheld devices won't work for several hours due to solar flare activity (sound familiar?). According to new Cornell University research, solar flares negatively affect GPS devices, based on observations of stellar phenomena in September of last year. In 2011 or 2012, when the sun reaches its next solar maximum, scientists expect it to cause a 90 percent GPS signal drop for several hours. While most of us will walk around, oblivious to these space fireworks, Alessandro Cerruti, a Cornell graduate student who studies solar flare effects, envisions this horrific day as a "nightmare situation," given that all planes will likely have GPS signaling by that time. However, given these harbingers of doom, Dr. Paul Kinter, Cerruti's advisor, has a brilliant solution: "I think the best remedy is to be aware of the problem and operate GPS systems with the knowledge that they may fail during a solar flare." See, it's just that easy, people.'

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"The technology is increasingly vital for activities including navigating cars and airplanes, bank financial transfers and more."

Bank financial transfers??? What the ...

Pete

re GPS and banktransfers. Dont you have to know where the monies are being transferred to! Might end up anywhere!

The key word is in the headline "may", it does not say will.

A good few people made a lot of money about a problem which "may" cause all computers to crash when the new millenium comes around.

I aint buying any upgrades for the Magellan to avoid the solar flare problem.

Duncs

banks are just a licence to print money for them selves know i worked in the banking game long enough to learn all of this 25 years. regards Pedro

Ionospheric Effects on GPS

Light, and radio wave travels at a constant speed in empty space, the velocity of light. Signals from GPS satellites are most effected by their passage through the ionosphere, the region above the atmosphere starting about 50 km up, where most of the very scant gas molecules present are ionised. Thus for instant, rather than oxygen molecules floating around, what's in the ionosphere are oxygen atoms that have lost one electron, called oxygen ions, together with electrons. Overall the ionosphere is neutral, but this mix of ions and elctrons is called a plasma and has several effects on light and radio waves, of which one is simply to delay passage. In order to compensate for the ionosphere, GPS signals are sent at two frequencies, so that for precise navigation, the ionospheric error can be roughly corrected. Nevertheless, even for the best precision GPS location, there's an error of about 30 m due to ionospheric uncertainies. If this figure appears large in comparison to various claims as to GPS accuracy, please note that our discussion is about ordinary GPS, using only a single receiver. Much higher accuracy in relative distances is obtained by Differential GPS.