We Barely Escaped a Solar Flare Catastrophe

Bright Side

A powerful solar flare recently occurred, but fortunately, it did not have a significant impact on Earth. However, it serves as a reminder of the potential dangers of solar flares and their effects on our planet. The solar flare was classified as a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) and was traveling at three times the normal CME speed. This increased speed meant that the flare had the potential to cause significant disruptions to Earth's magnetic field and potentially damage electronic systems. The most disruptive solar storm ever recorded was the Carrington Event in 1859.   Credit: Shockwaves on The Sun: by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:X_Class_Solar_Flare_Sends_%E2%80%98Shockwaves%E2%80%99_on_The_Sun_(6819094556).jpg  Aurora: by NASA, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aurora_as_seen_by_IMAGE.PNG  Solar Flare: by NASA/SDO https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14592/ Animation is created by Bright Side.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV   Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en   Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

Transcript

00:00On July 23, 2024, Europe's Solar Orbiter spacecraft observed a super-powerful solar

00:07flare erupting from the far side of the Sun. This flare wasn't the most extreme ever recorded,

00:13but still, we got extremely lucky this time not to get fried by it. Such solar flares

00:19often cause long-lived raging radiation storms, and if such a storm moves in the direction

00:25of Earth, it can lead to worldwide blackouts. Before we go deeper into details of that

00:33potentially disastrous solar flare, we need to figure out what exactly this solar phenomenon

00:38is. Solar flares occur because the magnetic fields in the atmosphere of our star are moving

00:44non-stop. When the Sun is approaching its solar maximum, and that's the most active

00:49period of its 11-year-long cycle, which is, by the way, exactly what's happening now,

00:55its magnetic fields get more and more tangled, making our star look like an enormous ball

01:00of tangled rubber bands. They loop around, cross over one another, cut one another off,

01:06and then reconnect. Ever seen iron filings sprinkled on a bar magnet? These filings line

01:13up along the magnetic lines of force. Like that, the hot plasma on the surface of the

01:19Sun is at the mercy of the magnetic lines of force. Sometimes, when the magnetic fields

01:24interact with each other, some plasma gets disconnected from the fields, and its particles

01:29accelerate to immense speeds and send powerful radiation to space. That's what a solar flare

01:35is. Other times, our star throws off massive amounts of matter. Those events are coronal

01:42mass ejections, CMEs. Just one CME can contain as much as 20 billion tons of material. If

01:50that material were rock, it would create a mountain about 2.75 miles across and almost

01:56a half a mile tall. The ejected material often travels at a speed of over a million miles

02:02per hour. Solar flares and CMEs are the most powerful explosions in the solar system, releasing

02:10unimaginable amounts of energy. Solar flares have their own classification according to

02:15their strength. The smallest and weakened ones are A and B class. Then there are C and

02:21M class solar flares. And the strongest are X class flares. A number from 1 to 9, and

02:27in some cases a larger one, accompanies each letter. That's similar to the Richter scale

02:32for earthquakes. A and B class flares are too weak to affect our planet. As for C class

02:38flares, they may have small noticeable consequences. M class flares can cause short radio blackouts

02:44at the poles and weak radiation storms that can still harm astronauts. But the most dangerous

02:50of them all are X class flares. These are flares more than 10 times more powerful than

02:56X1. That's why the classification of X class flares can go higher than 9.

03:02Now let's get back to that recent solar flare. It was X14 class 1. Now we already know that

03:09it means it was an extra strong flare. Other large flares astronomers have detected recently

03:14include an X12 solar flare that happened on the 20th of May and an X10 flare that occurred

03:20on the 17th of July. All of them have come from the back side of the Sun.

03:27If we talk of the Earth side of our star, the largest solar flare that has been recorded

03:31so far within this solar cycle happened on the 14th of May. It was an X8.7 flare that

03:38led to radio blackouts. And a strong geomagnetic storm leading to magnificent auroras all over

03:44the world occurred a few days earlier. Powerful coronal mass ejections accompanied this storm.

03:51As for the July X class flare, it was so powerful that it could've ended up tragically for

03:56us. Luckily, all that magnetically charged plasma blast that accompanied the flare didn't

04:02travel in our direction. If it had, it would've been quite the solar storm. Auroras would've

04:07been incredibly impressive and a wee bit terrifying in their magnificence. But at

04:12the same time, such a dynamic blast of energetic particles hurtling our way could've caused

04:18major technological problems and electrical blackouts like the event in 1989 which severely

04:24harmed Quebec's power grid. Or a much much earlier catastrophe that still managed to

04:29cause a lot of harm to the world. I'm talking about the Carrington event which

04:35occurred in 1859 and was the first documented solar flare affecting our planet. It happened

04:41on the 1st of September and was named after Richard Carrington, the solar astronomer who

04:46witnessed the flare through his own telescope and sketched the Sun's sunspots. According

04:51to scientists, that flare was the most powerful documented solar storm over the last 500 years.

04:58The Carrington event triggered auroras that were visible as far south as the Caribbean.

05:03It led to severe interruptions in telegraph services all over the world, even shocking

05:08some telegraph operators and sparking fires after discharges from the lines ignited telegraph

05:14paper. Another major solar flare that erupted on the 4th of August, 1972, destroyed long-distance

05:21phone communication across a few states, including Illinois. This event even made the American

05:27telephone and telegraph company redesign its power system for transatlantic cables.

05:34Now let's move to March, 1985, when two super-powerful CMEs triggered a geomagnetic storm which,

05:41in turn, set off a power blackout in Canada on the 13th of March. This blackout left around

05:476 million people without electricity for 9 hours. It is said that the flare disrupted

05:52electric power transmission from the Hydro-Québec generation station and melted a few power

05:58transformers in New Jersey. And still, this solar flare was nowhere near the power of

06:03the Carrington event.

06:06The Bastille Day solar storm took its name from the French national holiday because it

06:11occurred on the same day, on the 14th of July in the year 2000. It was an X-5 class event

06:18that caused some satellites to short-circuit and resulted in radio blackouts. It's still

06:23one of the most highly observed solar storm events.

06:27From October to November, 2003, RSTAR unleashed a series of large solar flares and coronal

06:33mass ejections, and they did reach Earth and slam into our atmosphere. Those solar storms,

06:39also known as Halloween storms of 2003, caused aircraft to be rerouted, impacted satellite

06:46systems, and led to power outages in Sweden. Besides, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory

06:52couldn't fulfill its functions during this solar onslaught.

06:56On the 28th of October, 2003, the Sun sent a whopper of a solar flare our way. The fire

07:03was so powerful, it overwhelmed the spacecraft sensor that was measuring it. The sensor topped

07:08out at a whopping X-28. But later, scientists figured out that the flare had reached a peak

07:13strength of about X-45.

07:18One more thing that made the Halloween storms so scary was that they happened during a time

07:22in the solar cycle when solar activity is usually quiet. That's 2 to 3 years after

07:28the solar maximum. According to NASA statistics, just 17 powerful flares erupted from our star

07:34during that time.

07:36The Sun spewed out another X-class solar flare on the 5th of December, 2006. It was an X-9

07:42class flare that disrupted satellite-to-ground communications and GPS navigational signals

07:48for around 10 minutes. That solar storm was so powerful, it even damaged the Solar X-ray

07:53Imager instrument on the GOES-13 satellite. It's the same damage to several pixels of

07:58its detector.

08:01In February 2022, SpaceX experienced the terrifying power of our star when a devastating geomagnetic

08:08storm destroyed 38 Starlink satellites worth tens of millions of dollars. It happened shortly

08:14after they were deployed. Unfortunately, Starlink satellites are especially vulnerable to geomagnetic

08:20storms since they're released into extremely low-altitude orbits, between 60 and 120 miles.

08:27They also rely on their onboard engines to overcome the drag force and raise themselves

08:31to their final altitude of around 350 miles over the surface of our planet.

08:38The thing is, during a geomagnetic storm, Earth's atmosphere absorbs energy from the

08:43storm, heats up, and extends upwards. It results in a denser thermosphere, which means more

08:49drag and it can be a serious issue for satellites. That's exactly what happened. The batch of

08:55newly released Starlink satellites didn't manage to overcome the increased drag and

08:59started to fall back, eventually burning up in the atmosphere.

09:06That's it for today! So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like

09:11and share it with your friends! Or if you want more, just click on these videos and

09:15stay on the Bright Side!

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