Solar Flares

There's been a lot of fuss in the news lately about Solar Flares and Solar Storms and how they are going to send us all 'back to the dark ages' but not really any more information than that.

So, just what exactly are Solar Flares and Solar Storms and just how dangerous are they?
A Solar Flare is defined by NASA as "A rapid outburst on the Sun, usually in the vicinity of sunspots." With roughly the power of 160,000,000,000 megatons of TNT.

A Sunspot is a intensely magnetic area on the surface of the Sun, these area's are slightly cooler than the surrounding photosphere and can last from anywhere between just a few hours to several months. Solar Flares occur when accelerated charge particles interact with the hot plasma, this interaction causes the rearrangement of the magnetic field lines in the sunspot causing two oppositely directed magnetic fields to collide and release a massive amount of stored energy known as a Coronal Mass Ejection or CME for short.

A Coronal Mass Ejection is a violent explosion of magnetic energy, a collection of hot plasma, gas and charged particles thrown up from the Sun out into space at approximately 400 km/sec.
When a CME is fired in the direction of the Earth and reaches Earth, it is known as a 'Geomagnetic Storm' this essentially means the CME is interacting with the Earth's magnetic field.
So what are the dangers of a Geomagnetic Storm? It's true, there is the potential for  a Geomagnetic Storm to be so bad that it would knock out the electrical grids, satellites and communications causing billions, potentially trillions of of pounds/dollars worth of damage that would take potentially years
to fix.

Thankfully not all Solar Flares send Geomagnetic Storms our way, plenty, in fact more often than not they happen on the sun during it's solar cycle and they fly harmlessly off into the distance away from the Earth, but occasionally they will head our way with the most recent and famous being the power grid of Quebec not being up to scratch and completely failing on March 13 1989.
Even more thankfully though they are still major events but however Governments, utility companies etc are more than capable of dealing with them with the effects of a storm minimal if at all, felt with the main noticeable effect being the beautiful displays of Northern Lights

Only one Geomagnetic Storm large enough to do such damage has only been recorded once, way back in 1859 when the storm was so large, Aurora Borealis (or Northern Lights) being seen as far south as the Caribbean.

The Sun is going to reach it's Solar Maximum in 2013, so expect lots of more these stories to appear in the media as Solar Flares become more frequent the chances of one heading our way are increased but the danger while not dismissible is probably not as bad as the news will have you believe. Only worry and start praying if NASA tells you too, not the reporter on the 6 o'clock news'

Any questions or comments please feel free to leave and I''ll reply as soon as I can.
Thanks for reading,

Arty