Solar Flares

Working off sun spots I can across something very interesting called solar flares! So I decided to keep on working with the sun and find out as much as I could about our own star! Some of the question I asked myself was: What is a solar flare? How do solar flares happen? Are they dangerous to us?

A flare is defined as a sudden, rapid, and intense variation in brightness. A solar flare is a violent explosion in the Sun's atmosphere with an energy equivalent to a billion megatons. A solar flare occurs when magnetic energy that has built up in the solar atmosphere is suddenly released. Lets just say that the incredible energy level of a solar flare is equivalent to tens of millions of atomic bombs exploding at the same time!

Most flares occur around sunspots, where intense magnetic fields emerge from the Sun's surface into the corona. The energy efficiency associated with solar flares may take several hours or even days to build up, but most flares take only a matter of minutes to release their energy.

They produce streams of highly energetic particles in the solar wind and the Earth's magnetosphere that can present radiation hazards to spacecraft and astronauts. The flares have been known to affect the electro transmission of many earthly communication devices including computers, cell phones, pagers and automobiles. Solar flares release a cascade of high energy particles known as a proton storm. Protons can pass through the human body, doing biochemical damage. Most proton storms take two or more hours from the time of visual detection to reach Earth

On January 20th, 2005, a giant sunspot named "NOAA 720" exploded. The blast sparked an "X-class" solar flare, the most powerful kind, and hurled a billion-ton cloud of electrified gas into space. Solar protons accelerated to nearly light speed by the explosion reached the Earth-Moon system minutes after the flare. Here on Earth, no one suffered. Our planet's thick atmosphere and magnetic field protects us from protons and other forms of solar radiation. In fact, the storm was good. When the plodding coronal mass ejection arrived 36 hours later and hit Earth's magnetic field, sky watchers in Europe saw the brightest and prettiest auroras in years.



The Moon is a different story. The Jan. 20th proton storm was by some measures the biggest since 1989. It was particularly rich in high-speed protons packing more than 100 million electron volts (100 MeV) of energy. Such protons can burrow through 11 centimeters of water. Since there was no astronaut on the moon no one was hurt. But if there were austronauts on there moon at that time they would've gotten sick. At first, he'd feel fine, but a few days later symptoms of radiation sickness would appear: vomiting, fatigue, low blood counts.

If you think that this blog is interesting you should check you this web cite on Solar Flares