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Today's Solar Flare
An anonymous reader writes "X1-class solar flare today (13:30 Universal Time). Still the SOHO spacecraft offers some of the all-time greatest snapshots anywhere on the web. The flare's residual activity would be shown white and at around 9 o'clock position here. There are 3 major categories, each 10 times stronger than the next: X-class flares are big; they are major events that can trigger planet-wide radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms. M-class flares are medium-sized; they generally cause brief radio blackouts that affect Earth's polar regions. C-class flares are small with few noticeable consequences here on Earth. If it were headed towards Earth, arrival is usually 48-72 hrs later (this is not coming this way). Future Mars astronauts should take a lead umbrella because one radiation day on Mars is like living at 70,000 feet on Earth." Nature is pretty.
Isn't that what Intel said caused Pentium 4's to underperform? Must have been.
Calm down, it's *only* ones and zeroes.
X class flares happen quite often, especially around the peak of the solar cycle (which we are currently moving away from). Often, they are not earth directed and do not cause anything so nice as aurora (even if they do cause blackouts on some frequencies). Keep an eye on spaceweather.com and notice how often these things occur. The flare referenced in the article was probably the one that occured on Friday from sunspot 95 and did not appear to be earth directed (it occured while SS95 was just comming into vision). I'm surprised that this flare got on the front page, since there have been larger ones recently (I can't recall exactly when - obviously, its effects were small enough).