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Astronomers have discovered a series of huge new sunspots on the side of the sun facing Earth, ahead of a period of what should be more solar activity.
Sunspots are dark areas on the sun’s surface caused by intense magnetic activity. This activity almost always leads to solar flares and coronal mass ejections – when nuclear radiation and gases inside a star are fired into the cosmos.
Ultraviolet image of the sun captured on Friday by the EIT
Solar activity has been observed to rise and fall naturally every 11 years, albeit not quite like clockwork, and astronomers believe we are about to enter a hectic period.
A new sunspot family, discovered on the surface of our star earlier this year, triggered the largest solar flare that scientists have seen since 2017.
Solar flares and new sunspots have been detected since June
If a glow is strong enough, it could damage satellites and impact radio signals on Earth.
NASA monitors for signs of such a flare as likely, although no space weather warnings have yet been issued regarding the new spots.
There are a number of classes of solar flares, with class X being considered the most intense.
Two rockets three hours apart in 2017 caused radio blackout, the former ranked as X2.2 – the number indicating its strength – while the latter was an X9.3, the strongest since 2006.
Researchers believe magnetic radiation from giant solar storms caused the sudden and almost instant detonation of dozens of marine mines in Vietnam in the 1970s.
At the time, the research team led by Dr Delores Knipp wrote that the solar storm “deserves a scientific rethink as a major challenge to the space weather community, as it provides space-age observations of what was likely a storm. Carrington class “.
NASA captured this image of a massive solar flare in 2017
The Carrington event is believed to be the largest solar storm ever recorded to hit Earth in 1859.
It left a visible aurora in the sky, even at latitudes much closer to the equator, and has been described in contemporary reports as even brighter than the light of a full moon.
It has caused the failure of telegraph systems across Europe and North America, and a similar storm today could cause trillions of dollars in damage globally.
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