Earth’s ‘magnetic song’ captured during solar storm
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A major solar flare erupted from the Sun last night in the strongest storm seen in the current weather cycle.
It fired off what is known as an X1-class solar flare, its most powerful of its kind that peaked at 3:30pm, according to reports.
NASA officials called the solar eruption a “significant solar flare,” adding that it was captured in real-time video by the space agency’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Now, a coronal mass ejection from the flare could batter Earth over the weekend.
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And the flare has already wreaked some havoc, causing a temporary but strong radio black out in parts South America.
But if that wasn’t enough, more chaos could be on the way.
Now, a coronal mass ejection (CME) from the flare could batter Earth over the weekend.
A CME is a large eruption of charged particles coming from the flare.
When these come enter the atmosphere where satellites lie, power outages and widespread communications failures are a significant worry.
It is predicted that it may strike the Earth by Saturday or Sunday, bringing a real fright just in time for halloween.
But while X-class flare represents the most intense category of sun flares, the number indicates the strength of the X-category flare. Luckily, X-1 is ranked the least powerful, so we should be grateful that an X2 is twice as intense, or even an X-10, 10 times as intesne as the storm coming for us right now.
But don’t get your hopes up, as even a minor storm has the ability to cause chaos if it comes directly into contact with a satellite.
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