A giant sunspot swelled to twice the size of Earth, doubling its diameter in 24 hours, and it’s pointed straight at us.
The sunspot, called AR3038, has grown to 2.5 times a landThe size of the sunspot – making it 19,800 miles or 31,900 kilometers in diameter – from Sunday (June 19) to Monday night (June 20), According to Spaceweather.coma website that tracks news related to solar eruptions, geomagnetic storms, and other cosmic weather events.
Sunspots are dark spots on the the sunA surface where strong magnetic fields, created by the flow of electric charges from the sun’s plasma, complex before suddenly exploding. The resulting energy release triggers bursts of radiation called solar flares and generates explosive jets of solar material called coronal mass ejection (CMEs).
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Spaceweather.com reports: “Yesterday, the AR3038 sunspot was big. Today it’s massive. The fast-growing sunspot doubled in size in just 24 hours.” AR3038 contains an unstable ‘beta-gamma’ magnetic field that has an energy of class M. [medium-sized] Solar flares, and they are facing the Earth directly.”
When a solar flare hits Earth’s upper atmosphere, the glow is X ray UV rays ionize atoms, making it impossible for high-frequency radio waves to bounce off them and creating what’s called radio blackout. Radio dimming occurs over areas on Earth that are illuminated by the Sun during flares; These blackouts are rated from R1 to R5 according to their progressive severity.
In April and May, Two solar explosions caused a power outage R3 Over the Atlantic, Australia and Asia, Live Science previously reported. When solar flares travel at the speed of light, they take just 8 minutes to reach us, from an average distance of about 93 million miles (150 million km).
If an Earth-facing sunspot forms near the Sun’s equator (where AR3038 is located), it usually only takes less than two weeks for it to travel through the Sun so that it is no longer facing the Earth, According to SpaceWeatherLive. Currently, AR3038 is located slightly north of the Sun’s equator and is Just over halfwayso Earth will remain in the crossfire for a few more days.
Despite their alarmingly rapid growth, giant sunspots are less terrifying than they might seem. The flares it will most likely produce are Class M solar flares, which “generally cause short-range radio outages affecting the Earth’s polar regions,” along with minor radiation storms, European Space Agency Wrote in a blog post. Class M flares are the most common type of solar flare. Although the sun sometimes shoots out massive X-class (strongest class) flares with the potential to cause High frequency power outage On the glow-prone side of the Earth, these flares are observed much less often than smaller solar flares.
Sunspots can also cause solar material to burp. On planets that have strong magnetic fields, such as Earth, our magnetic field sucks a shower of solar debris from large-sized planets, resulting in powerful geomagnetic storms. During these storms, Earth’s magnetic field It is compressed slightly by high-energy particle waves, which flow down magnetic field lines near the poles and excite particles in the atmosphere, releasing energy in the form of light to create a colorful twilight in the night sky.
The motions of these electrically charged particles can disrupt our planet’s magnetic field with enough force to send it out Satellites are falling to the groundLive Science previously reported, and scientists have warned that intense geomagnetic storms could reach that paralyzes the internet. Debris eruptions from ejected coronal masses typically take about 15 to 18 hours to reach Earth, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Forecasting Center.
Astronomers have known since 1775 that solar activity rises and falls according to a roughly 11-year cycle, but lately, the sun has been more active than expected, with nearly twice as much sunspots as predicted. NOAA. The Sun’s activity is expected to rise steadily over the next few years, reaching a total maximum in 2025 before declining again.
Scientists believe that the largest solar storm ever seen during contemporary history was the Carrington event of 1859, which released roughly the same energy as 10 billion 1 megatons. atomic bombs. After colliding with Earth, a strong stream of solar energy particles sent telegraph systems flying around the world and caused the aurora borealis to appear brighter than full light. the moon To appear as far south as the Caribbean. If a similar event happened today, Scientists warnwould cause billions of dollars in damage and lead to widespread power outages, such as the 1989 solar storm that released one billion tons of gas and caused blackouts throughout the Canadian province of Quebec, NASA reported.
Originally published on Live Science.