If your GPS device or radio ham was shaky today, it’s an excellent reason. As per NASA, the sun unleashed two massive flares. Both flares were classified as X-class emissions, the most intense type. The second one was classified as X9.3, making it the strongest solar flare in the last decade.
The first flare peaked around 5:10 am Eastern time, and the second flare occurred at 8:02 am. Both flares were observed via NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which recorded images of both events.
“X-class solar flares are the largest solar system explosions, ” says Leah Crane at New Scientist. The flares happen because the rotation of the sun’s inner sphere alters its magnetic field. When the magnetic field explodes and adjusts, it releases an instant bright flash. The same phenomenon can launch a coronal mass explosion of magnetic radiation and plasma into space.
There’s no reason to be concerned about these explosions, as per NASA. The radiation from the solar flare can’t penetrate Earth’s atmosphere; thus, it will not negatively affect those living on the ground. However, the streams could affect communication systems, especially older satellites. However, the newest technology of satellites like those used to track Harvey, such as the satellite GOES-16 satellite that is used to track Harvey is more resilient to the flares, Terry Onsager, a physicist at the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, told Stephanie Pappas from LiveScience.
These massive flares are not typical for the sun. The sun is currently in the so-called solar minimum, with the lowest activity during the eleven-year cycle known as the sun’s spot. The amount of solar activity has declined significantly in the last few decades; some scientists think that we’re soon headed towards a “Little Ice Age” similar to the one which led to cooler temperatures across the globe in the late 1700s and the early 1800s. But this doesn’t mean that the solar system is silent.
“We are heading toward solar minimum, but the interesting thing about that is you can still have events, they’re just not as frequent,” Rob Steenburgh of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) informs Lewin. “We’re not having X-flares every day for a week, for instance — the activity is less frequent, but no less potentially strong.”
Although these flares were spectacular, they’re far from the largest, like one called X28 that was ablaze at the time of the incident in 2003. It could have been more powerful, according to Crane. The moment the event occurred, NASA instrumentation became overloaded and stopped recording the event.
There may be a positive aspect to the auroras emitted from these flares. The majority of these large flares are attributed to CMEs. The particles from this stream of energy usually encounter Earth’s magnetic field, which then flows towards the poles, where it ignites brilliant colors in the sky.
The report by Sarah Lewin at Space.com writes the latest flares were triggered by an active sunspot, known as “active region 2673,” which is seven times high in height as Earth and nine times wider. The exact spot released an M-class flare from the sun that is one-tenth the energy for an X-class burst. This blast produced two coronal mass ejections, which could result in amazing auroras later in the evening.
Astronomers aren’t sure whether the latest X-class flares have also caused coronal mass eruptions because the orbiting observatories monitoring the sun’s activity aren’t communicating with Earth until later in the evening. If they produced CMEs, we’re likely to see some spectacular auroras over the next few days.