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Sun Produces Strongest Flare Ever Recorded
idontneedanickname writes "The BBC is reporting about the newest flare unleashed by the sun. According to NASA's SOHO website, "Today word came from the SEC that their best estimate was X28. We have a new number 1 X-ray flare for the record books." As usual there are magnificent images to be admired."
This one's not headed straight for us...
That Sun Microsystems was coming out with a new line of servers when they read the headline?
First the SunFire line, now the SunFlare line, the STRONGEST EVER!
This sig is the express property of someone.
Voyager got out just in time!
My guess would be... TERRORISM.
evil adrian
Space.com covered. it yesterday, with an update today. The bottom of the article has two cool animated gif's that showed the X-ray sensor blinded after the flare, and the subsequent coronal mass that was ejected.
Please direct all bug reports to
Impressive until we realize that we haven't been measuring solar flares for very long.
Were these parsnips CORRECTLY MARINATED in TACO SAUCE? -- WTF is that?
I'm not one to come out and harp on SUV owners, but with this abnormal solar behavior I think it's clear to see how much impact humans are having on not only our world but even beyond.
Emissions are way up and pollution is at an all time high in many areas. Add to that that the polar ice shelves are rapidly breaking up and falling into the ocean, and you've got yourself a recipe for disaster.
The sunspots that produced these powerful flares during last days moved across the solar limb. They are now on the far side of the Sun. However, such huge suspots can last quite long and it is likely they will still be active after two weeks when the appear again on the side of the Sun facing Earth.
Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!
...that Steve Ballmer hasn't just been eating a heck of a lot of Mexican food this week?
Next we'll see cloned sunspots from AMD and Cyrix, followed by a massive rebranding campaign by Intel...
Wait. What were we talking about again?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Hydrogen Hydrogen, the nuclear fruit
The more you burn, gravity can let it toot
The more you toot, the better your feel
So burn Hydrogen in every nuclear meal!
In Space...nobody can smell your vapors
-1 Troll (I wish I could think of something to post)
-1 Overrated (I wish my ADD would let me read and absorb all of this...functional illiteracy doesn't help either)
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
I *still* havent seen any of the promised Aurora Borealis [space.com] from previous flares.
It's been a decade since last I saw any.
Its strange how all of a sudden there are many reports of strong flares... Just as the Space Weather forecasting program comes up for budget renewal.
Sig- http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi?ayefly
there's actually a webcam pointed at the sun... i'ts updated every 4 hours and can be found here.
According to Space.com: The image is generated by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, which sits partway between Earth and the Sun.
The solar flare produced proton wind in speed exceeding what the SOHO probe can measure. It also saturated the X-Ray detectors on NOAA's GOES satellites. X28 is an understatement, the actual value cannot be precisely determined, but is thought of being somewhere around X40 to X50. This is a logarithmic scale, NOAA says the peak X-Ray emission reached approximately 2 * 10e-3 W/ squared meter.
:
M-class solar flares' order of magnitude is 10e-5W/squared meter, X-class' is 10e-4W/ squared meter, and anything beyond 10e-3W/squared meter
- was unheard of until a few days ago.
- is a Y-class MEGA FLARE! Tin-foil hat time.
On unrelated news, X-Plane now supports borealis auroras...
Maybe we deserve this world ?
The probability of this happening is a double secret statistical anomaly.
No, sunspots are systems far larger than and completely unaffected by any normal infalling material. Here's a good Q&A at space.com covering the flares in general.
I hadn't heard that one before. And yes, it is disturbing.
eructation ( P ) (-rk-tshn, rk-)
n.
The act or an instance of belching.
Source: The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright (C) 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Don't know if anyone else saved the GOES XRay Flux image:
http://cyberial.com/images/cme.gif
Pretty impressive saturation!
I am a power supply design engineer among other things. (no guessing!) Please don't use words like "Flare", Burn-In, or "Let's fire it up!" when you are talking to me. At 220 volts and 10 amps, those are very unwelcome words.
Highly unlikely. The heat from the Sun would vaporise anything long before impact.
Flares (including this one) tend to be linked with sunspots which are relatively cool (emphasis on the relatively there) areas of the Sun. The Sun is made of plasma - super-hot electrically-charged particles. The plasma convects, transferring energy to the surface of the Sun. As the plasma moves it creates enormous magnetic fields. Normally these are confined within the body of the Sun, but occasionally, the magnetic flux extends beyond the surface of the Sun as an enormous loop. At each point where the line emerges and re-enters the Sun are a group of sunspots.
Hot plasma streams along the line of flux, it usually confined to the magnetic flux, but occasionally it will break away as a so-called prominence.
Flares are relatively common, but their cause is not yet understood (if any solar activity experts are hanging around - please feel free to step in right about now :)). From memory, the most well-regarded theory is that ever-increasing amounts of energy is stored in the magnetic fields of the sun spot. As the field becomes twisted and tangled, the energy continues to build until a point when the magnetic field snaps back into a less-tangled state. At that point an enormous amount of energy and plasma are blasted into space in a very short period of time.
Best wishes,
Mike.
... and as usual the Astronomy Picture of the Day, already has a good picture posted
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
The power of these flares spewing into space must be truly ginormous. Sure, they're unusual, and unpredictable. But if we could harness even a tiny fraction of even a single one, we could supply all the Earth's energy needs for the forseeable future.
How about we send a bunch of satellites into LSO (low solar orbit), within the orbit of Mercury, with solar photocollectors powering their wait. When a flare does come by one or more of them, a large, diaphanous electromagnetic antennae are charged by the approaching particle storm, converting the power into electricity, which charges a laser array. The lasers fire from the "lucky" satellite into a power grid among all the satellites. The satellites nearest the Earth fire the power at a receiver on the Moon, which charges a gigantic battery bored beneath the surface. Over months or years, lower powered lasers send the power to collector platforms floating on the seas, which send electricity over cables to the electric grid on land.
Sure, we'd have to wait years before a flare was captured. And it likely would destroy at least one of the satellites capturing it. But there would be several seconds during which the satellite could capture more joules of power than consumed since we invented fire. So after a patient wait, playing the odds, we'd win the solar lottery. If we started now, repurposing all that expensive, dead-end Star Wars spacewar technology, we might be ready by 2020. Then we could power not just our homey little Earth, but all our exploration/communication needs within the planetary systems.
--
make install -not war
Sol? Would you come here for a moment, please?
Sol: I'm sorry. I was late. I was having lunch.
I need to talk about your flare.
Sol: Really? I have 15 spots on. I, uh, (shows him)
Well, ok, 15 is minimum, ok?
Sol: Ok.
Now, it's up to you whether or not you want to just do the bare minimum. Well, like Sirius, for example, has 37 pieces of flare. And a terrific smile.
Sol: Ok. Ok, you want me to flare more?
Look. Sol.
Sol: Yeah.
People can get a sunburn anywhere, ok? They come to Earth for the atmosphere and the attitude. That's what the flare's about. It's about fun.
Sol: Ok. So, more then?
Look, we want you to express yourself, ok? If you think the bare minimum is enough, then ok. But some suns choose to flare more and we encourage that, ok? You do want to express yourself, don't you?
Sol: Yeah. Yeah.
Great. Great. That's all I ask.
Sol: Ok.
Thank goodness it wasn't from the Pentium IV region, or even the extremely Hot Athlon XP region, we'd be burnt to a crisp. Damn solar over-clockers, If they burn out this sun, where are we gunna get another one? The bidders have been grabbing them up on ebay like hotcakes.
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
My question is this: What do the numbers mean? Is it like the richter scale ( powers of 10 ) or what?
X-Ray flux is measured in Watts per square meter (averaged out over a period of time, usually over a minute).
10^-8 is the lower threshhold of an A-Class
10^-7 is the lower threshhold of a B-Class
10^-6 is the lower threshhold of a C-Class
10^-5 is the lower threshhold of a M-Class
10^-4 is the lower threshhold of a X-Class
10^-3 is the lower threshhold of a X10-Class
10^-2 would be the lower threshhold of an X100-Class
So, the X-28 flare saturated the detectors of the GOES satellites with 0.0028 W/m^2 energy.