Scientists have observed sunspots with the potential for solar flares that are pointing at Earth and have doubled in size overnight; is our planet in danger?
However, several experts have squashed fears, saying that the worries are far from unusual and they explained how the flares could affect our blue planet. In the past week, Active Region 3038, or AR3038, has been steadily growing, said Rob Steenburgh, the acting lead of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Forecast Office.
Rapidly Growing Sunspot
Steenburgh said that the Sun's size and growth rate of sunspots were relatively normal in terms of the cosmic scale. The expert added that this is what sunspots do, grow over time, go through stages, and in the end, they decay.
Sunspots appear darker to human eyes because they are cooler than other parts of the Sun's surface, NASA said. These spots are cooler because they form where strong magnetic fields prevent heat within the Sun from reaching its surface, as per USA Today.
Steenburgh added that the easiest way to explain sunspots is that they are regions of magnetic activity on the Sun's surface. On the other hand, NASA noted that solar flares, which typically arise from sunspots, are a "sudden explosion of energy caused by tangling, crossing, or reorganizing of magnetic field lines near sunspots.
He said that they can be thought of as similar to rubber bands and if they are twisted around your finger, they eventually get twisted too much and break. The difference with magnetic fields is that they reconnect after breaking. When they reconnect, it is in that process that a flare is generated.
Steenburgh added that the larger and more complex that a sunspot becomes, the higher the likelihood is for solar flares. The recently famous sunspot has doubled in size each day for the last three days and is already about 2.5 times the size of the Earth.
According to Newsweek, a powerful enough solar flare can cause disruptions on Earth, such as interfering with radio communication networks and navigational systems. It can also cause issues for people who work in the marine or aviation industries, among others.
Dangerous Solar Flares
The associate director for science in the Heliophysics Science Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, C. Alex Young, was the one that noted the size and growth rate of the sunspot in an email. He noted that the sunspot was producing small solar flares but "does not have the complexity for the largest flares."
Although AR3038 is capable of sending M-class solar flares, these are not particularly disruptive to our planet. Despite being the second-strongest type of solar flares, they only tend to cause moderate radio blackout events.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center is currently monitoring the sunspot for a potential solar flare event but has not yet issued any warnings.
Far more harmful than a potential solar flare from AR3038 are the most powerful X-class flares, which can create "long-lasting radiation storms that can harm satellites, communication systems, and even ground-based technologies and power grids, the New York Post reported.
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