The giant sunspot AR3664 on the Sun’s surface has grown so much in size in recent days that it has become one of the largest and most active sunspots of the current solar cycle. This spot became 15 times larger than the Earth and released another powerful X-class flare. The radiation that reached our planet caused another communications blackout in some regions, writes Space.
On Thursday, May 9, a new powerful X2.2 class flare appeared in sunspot AR3664. Before this, as Focus already wrote, on May 8, an X1 class flare appeared in it, as well as several M class eruptions. According to scientists, the size of the spot is almost 200 thousand km, which is 15 times the size of the Earth.
NASA spacecraft captured images of an explosive event on the Sun. Scientists note that the giant sunspot is one of the largest and most active in the current 25th solar cycle. It is predicted that similarly powerful eruptions may occur in this region of the Sun in the coming days.
Such intense flares, which are bursts of radiation and energy due to changes in the Sun’s magnetic field, often cause shortwave radio communications on Earth to go dark. As a result of the X2.2 class flare, radio communications in Europe and Africa were turned off for some time.
Such blackouts occur due to the penetration of ultraviolet and X-ray radiation into the Earth’s atmosphere literally 8-10 minutes following a solar flare. These rays ionize the upper part of the Earth’s atmosphere. Ionization results in a higher-density environment through which high-frequency short-wave radio signals travel. Radio waves that interact with electrons in an ionized environment lose energy and this leads to either deterioration of the signal quality or its disappearance.
It is not known whether the new Class X eruption was accompanied by a coronal mass ejection, when a stream of plasma shoots out of the Sun that can reach Earth within days. A previous flare of the same class, which originated in the sunspot AR3664, was accompanied by a plasma ejection, which, according to forecasts, should hit the Earth on either May 10 or 11. Such a collision of plasma and the Earth’s magnetic field will lead to the appearance of a geomagnetic storm.
Sunspot AR3664 is so huge, scientists say, that it rivals one dating back to 1859, which produced a series of some of the most powerful solar flares. All of them were accompanied by gigantic plasma emissions. As a result, such a strong geomagnetic storm appeared on Earth that almost the entire planet lost telegraph communications. But scientists believe that the coronal mass ejections that have occurred in recent days cannot cause such global disruptions in communication for a long period.
We remind you that scientists have divided all solar flares into classes: from the weakest with the letter A to the strongest with the letter X. Between them are classes B, C and M as the power increases, respectively. Each class of flares also has designations in the form of numbers from 1 to 10. They indicate the power level of a solar flare. Each class of flare is 10 times stronger than the previous one.
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2024-05-10 09:05:15
