By Joe Kunches. Could the sun unleash a flare of such a magnitude that it dwarfs anything that humans have ever observed? Yes, says Kazunari Shibata, an astrophysicist from Kyoto University in Japan, and it could have incredible consequences.
At the recent Space Weather Workshop in Boulder, Colo., sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA, Shibata gave a sobering presentation on the possibility of “superflares,” solar flares that contain energy 1,000 times larger than what has been observed in modern times.
Solar flares are a common type of solar eruption, an explosive release of the magnetic energy concentrated in sunspots. Flares are an everyday occurrence – small ones – and can range in energy output over many orders of magnitude. The NOAA Space Weather Scales classifies flares by peak X-ray output on a 1-5 scale (R1-R5), with a flare rated “extreme” (R5) said to occur less than once a solar cycle. In this current cycle, no flare has exceeded the strong (R3) level.
Solar flares are known to cause blackouts of radio communications on the sunlit side of the Earth and disrupt radio navigation services. They provide the energy for a class of energetic particle acceleration that results in solar radiation storms that can disturb or damage satellites. They are also sometimes associated with geomagnetic storms that, if severe enough, can disturb the Earth’s electrical grid.
Shibata presented a statistical analysis suggesting a superflare, off-the-charts of our current classification system, should occur about once every 10,000 years. But how do we know if the record of satellite observations of flare energy go back only to the mid-1970s? (Read more from “Scientists Spot Evidence for ‘Superflares,’ Blowing Away Anything We’ve Ever Seen” HERE)
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Sun Ejects Intense, X-Class Flare, Signaling Increase in Solar Activity
By Angela Fritz. Despite being a relatively quiet period for the sun, our star unleashed a powerful solar flare on Tuesday evening that caused a strong radio blackout here on Earth and an audible radio burst.
Tuesday’s flare, which was hurled from sunspot AR2339, was rated X2 on the intensity scale, in which X-class flares are the strongest. “The biggest X-class flares are by far the largest explosions in the solar system and are awesome to watch,” writes NASA. “Loops tens of times the size of Earth leap up off the sun’s surface when the sun’s magnetic fields cross over each other and reconnect. In the biggest events, this reconnection process can produce as much energy as a billion hydrogen bombs.”
Many solar flares are associated with coronal mass ejections, in which the sun’s gas and magnetic field is carried away by the solar wind. Although it does appear that there was a coronal mass ejection associated with this flare, it is highly unlikely to impact Earth in the form of a geomagnetic storm, given that the flare was pointed away from Earth.
However, the intense flare was strong enough to produce an R3-strong radio blackout over much of the Pacific Ocean and western North America. In R3 blackouts, high-frequency radio communication and low-frequency navigation signals are typically lost for about an hour. “Mariners, aviators, and ham radio operators are the type of people who might have noticed the disturbance,” writes spaceweather.com. (Read more from this story HERE)
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The Germanwings co-pilot suspected of deliberately crashing a jet in the French Alps rehearsed the fatal maneuver on the morning of the disaster, and had twice been refused medical papers needed to fly, investigators said on Wednesday.
