Sun to cause sat-nav havoc

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.

The way solar flares affect a part of the earth's atmosphere, known as the ionosphere, is different all over the world. It is believed UK sat-nav users will get inaccuracies of around ten metres.

The last time the Sun reached a solar maximum GPS was not widely available. GPS, or Global Positioning System, is used in all aircraft, by the military and is now in most new cars and mobile phones.

GPS works by orbiting satellites sending their location and time through the earth ionosphere, back to earth. A receiver then calculates its position by working out how long the signal takes to reach it.

The new solar maximum will cause solar flares that will affect the ionosphere, causing signals to take longer to reach the receiver.