From Media wires, solars flares could black out GPS in the next few. When
GPS is down, it will be Morse to the rescue for emergency communications (as
usual, the old work horse will pull us through!). Sea going navigators can
ignore Morse at their own peril.

"Solar flare activity is expected to build for the next three years to a
crescendo that some scientists say could be cataclysmic, causing a
telecommunication blackout that would down mobile phones and navigational
systems.
"The solar flares are expected to be at its maximum intensity by the year
2010," Markus Aschwanden, a solar physicist at the Solar and Astrophysics
Laboratory, Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center, told the Hindu News.
"These solar flares and Coronoal Mass Ejections from the sun have the
ability to travel all the way to the earth and create a black-out of
cellular phone services and navigational systems like the GPS.

Solar flares and CMEs occur when magnetic energy built up in the Sun's
atmosphere is suddenly released. The flares carrying high amount of energy,
travel at high speeds and reach the Earth in a matter of hours. "