The giant solar explosions of energy and light aren’t over yet. Officials said on Tuesday that the sun just emitted another major solar flare – and that it’s the strongest one so far in the current solar cycle.The latest flare peaked just before 1 p.m. ET, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center said, with an X-class rating of X8.7. X-class solar flares are the strongest of solar flares, which are described by NASA as “giant explosions on the sun that send energy, light and high speed particles into space.” The center said the flare was an R3 or “strong” flare, meaning it could have caused wide area blackouts of high-frequency radio communications for about an hour on the sunlit side of Earth. It also may have caused low-frequency navigation signal issues for the same period of time.”Flares of this magnitude are not frequent,” the center said in its update, also posting on social media, “Region 3664 not done yet!”The flare came out of the sunspot dubbed 3664. That spot, combined with region 3663, makes up a cluster “much larger than Earth,” NOAA said last week. And as of last Thursday, 3664 was only continuing “to grow and increase in magnetic complexity and has evolved into a higher threat of increased solar flare risk.”Two other flares – rated X1.7 and X1.2 – also erupted shortly before, although they were also not anticipated to be linked to any major impacts on Earth.Despite the intensity of the flare, officials said there is not yet concern of a coronal mass ejection, or large burst of solar plasma and magnetic field. Those CMEs are what lead to geomagnetic storms like the rare extreme storm that occurred over th …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnThe giant solar explosions of energy and light aren’t over yet. Officials said on Tuesday that the sun just emitted another major solar flare – and that it’s the strongest one so far in the current solar cycle.The latest flare peaked just before 1 p.m. ET, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center said, with an X-class rating of X8.7. X-class solar flares are the strongest of solar flares, which are described by NASA as “giant explosions on the sun that send energy, light and high speed particles into space.” The center said the flare was an R3 or “strong” flare, meaning it could have caused wide area blackouts of high-frequency radio communications for about an hour on the sunlit side of Earth. It also may have caused low-frequency navigation signal issues for the same period of time.”Flares of this magnitude are not frequent,” the center said in its update, also posting on social media, “Region 3664 not done yet!”The flare came out of the sunspot dubbed 3664. That spot, combined with region 3663, makes up a cluster “much larger than Earth,” NOAA said last week. And as of last Thursday, 3664 was only continuing “to grow and increase in magnetic complexity and has evolved into a higher threat of increased solar flare risk.”Two other flares – rated X1.7 and X1.2 – also erupted shortly before, although they were also not anticipated to be linked to any major impacts on Earth.Despite the intensity of the flare, officials said there is not yet concern of a coronal mass ejection, or large burst of solar plasma and magnetic field. Those CMEs are what lead to geomagnetic storms like the rare extreme storm that occurred over th …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
