News tagged with solar flares
The strange case of solar flares and radioactive elements
(PhysOrg.com) -- When researchers found an unusual linkage between solar flares and the inner life of radioactive elements on Earth, it touched off a scientific detective investigation that could end up protecting the lives ...
Aug 23, 2010 |
4.9 / 5 (88) |
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Radioactive decay rates vary with the sun's rotation: research
Radioactive decay rates, thought to be unique physical constants and counted on in such fields as medicine and anthropology, may be more variable than once thought.
Aug 31, 2010 |
4.5 / 5 (41) |
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Scientists find errors in hypothesis linking solar flares to global temperature
(PhysOrg.com) -- The field of climate science is nothing if not complex, where a host of variables interact with each other in intricate ways to produce various changes. Just like any other area of science, ...
A big surprise from the edge of the solar system: magnetic bubbles (w/ video)
(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Voyager probes are truly going where no one has gone before. Gliding silently toward the stars, 9 billion miles from Earth, they are beaming back news from the most distant, unexplored ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Jun 09, 2011 |
4.9 / 5 (35) |
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Forecasters keep eye on looming 'Solar Max'
The coming year will be an important one for space weather as the Sun pulls out of a trough of low activity and heads into a long-awaited and possibly destructive period of turbulence.
Dec 29, 2010 |
4 / 5 (37) |
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NASA's New Eye on the Sun Delivers Stunning First Images (w/ Video)
(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's recently launched Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, is returning early images that confirm an unprecedented new capability for scientists to better understand our sun’s dynamic processes. ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Apr 21, 2010 |
5 / 5 (29) |
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Researchers build Moon garden
The Moon is not the most hospitable place for growing fruits and vegetables. The lack of atmosphere and natural water, extreme temperatures, and exposure to cosmic rays present some serious challenges for ...
Global eruption rocks the sun
On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Dec 14, 2010 |
5 / 5 (22) |
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Future NASA mission to sun 'a life's dream' for some
The chest-high rack of electronics Justin Kasper is assembling in a Massachusetts office park will fit in a shoe box before he's done.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Mar 16, 2012 |
4.5 / 5 (24) |
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Solar Dynamics Observatory: The 'Variable Sun' Mission
For some years now, an unorthodox idea has been gaining favor among astronomers. It contradicts old teachings and unsettles thoughtful observers, especially climatologists.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Feb 05, 2010 |
4.9 / 5 (18) |
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Solar Mystery Solved
(PhysOrg.com) -- Solar flares are amongst the most dangerous cosmic phenomena man has ever known. Though they pose no harm to humans, their effect on technology is vast. When they occur, they possess the capability ...
Honey, I Blew up the Tokamak
Magnetic reconnection could be the Universe's favorite way to make things explode. It operates anywhere magnetic fields pervade space--which is to say almost everywhere. On the sun magnetic reconnection causes ...
Aug 31, 2009 |
4.7 / 5 (18) |
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New Solar Cycle Prediction
(PhysOrg.com) -- An international panel of experts led by NOAA and sponsored by NASA has released a new prediction for the next solar cycle. Solar Cycle 24 will peak, they say, in May 2013 with a below-average ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Jun 01, 2009 |
4 / 5 (20) |
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2012: Killer solar flares are a physical impossibility
(PhysOrg.com) -- Given a legitimate need to protect Earth from the most intense forms of space weather great bursts of electromagnetic energy and particles that can sometimes stream from the sun ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Nov 11, 2011 |
4.6 / 5 (17) |
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Fermi telescope reveals best-ever view of the gamma-ray sky
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new map combining nearly three months of data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is giving astronomers an unprecedented look at the high-energy cosmos. To Fermi's eyes, the universe ...
Mar 11, 2009 |
4.8 / 5 (16) |
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Solar flare
A solar flare is a big explosion in the Sun's atmosphere that can release as much as 6 × 1025 joules of energy. The term is also used to refer to similar phenomena in other stars, where the more accurate term stellar flare applies.
Solar flares affect all layers of the solar atmosphere (photosphere, corona, and chromosphere), heating plasma to tens of millions of kelvins and accelerating electrons, protons, and heavier ions to near the speed of light. They produce radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum at all wavelengths, from radio waves to gamma rays. Most flares occur in active regions around sunspots, where intense magnetic fields penetrate the photosphere to link the corona to the solar interior. Flares are powered by the sudden (timescales of minutes to tens of minutes) release of magnetic energy stored in the corona. If a solar flare is exceptionally powerful, it can cause coronal mass ejections.
X-rays and UV radiation emitted by solar flares can affect Earth's ionosphere and disrupt long-range radio communications. Direct radio emission at decimetric wavelengths may disturb operation of radars and other devices operating at these frequencies.
Solar flares were first observed on the Sun by Richard Christopher Carrington and independently by Richard Hodgson in 1859 as localized visible brightenings of small areas within a sunspot group. Stellar flares have also been observed on a variety of other stars.
The frequency of occurrence of solar flares varies, from several per day when the Sun is particularly "active" to less than one each week when the Sun is "quiet". Large flares are less frequent than smaller ones. Solar activity varies with an 11-year cycle (the solar cycle). At the peak of the cycle there are typically more sunspots on the Sun, and hence more solar flares.
For more information about Solar flare, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.