# Massive Solar Activity



## Incognito (Nov 10, 2003)

Been watching this for a little while now, and nearly didn't report on it.

However, the jury is finally in - we have experienced the biggest burst of solar activity for over a thousand years. This iscludes the largest single solar flare ever recorded. What prevented a potential risk of telcommunications melt-down was the fact that the magnetic field of the flare hit at the wrong angle to create real damage. 

It will be interesting to see what happens over the next solar cycle. Especially if the American monitoring station loses its funding, as was about to be the case just before this burst.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994321

excerpt:


> The Sun is more active now than it has been for a millennium. The realisation, which comes from a reconstruction of sunspots stretching back 1150 years, comes just as the Sun has thrown a tantrum. Over the last week, giant plumes of have material burst out from our star's surface and streamed into space, causing geomagnetic storms on Earth.
> 
> The dark patches on the surface of the Sun that we call sunspots are a symptom of fierce magnetic activity inside. Ilya Usoskin, a geophysicist who worked with colleagues from the University of Oulu in Finland and the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, has found that there have been more sunspots since the 1940s than for the past 1150 years.


And from the BBC on the largest flare:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3251481.stm

excerpt:


> *Solar scientists have confirmed that Tuesday's explosion on the Sun was, by far, the biggest flare ever recorded, capping an energetic solar period. *
> 
> 
> Powerful flares get an "X" designation. Prior to this week, the biggest ever seen was X20. Last Tuesday's was X28.
> ...


 
And there's a very nice graphic from the BBC site:


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## Brian G Turner (Mar 18, 2004)

Just an update - the size of a massive solar flare that occurred in this period hs been doubled:

*Sun's massive explosion upgraded*

*The massive solar flare that erupted from the Sun last November was far bigger than scientists first thought. *

At the time, satellite detectors were unable to record its true size because they were blinded by its radiation. 

But University of Otago physicists say they have now estimated the probable scale of the huge explosion by studying how X-rays hit the Earth's atmosphere. 

They tell Geophysical Research Letters the X45 class event was more than twice as big as the previous record flare. 

Fortunately, the Earth did not take a direct hit from this immense blast of radiation and matter. Had it done so, several orbiting satellites would almost certainly have been damaged and there could have been considerable disruption of radio communications and power grids on the planet's surface. 


More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3515788.stm


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