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Saturday, March 30, 2013

Solar Flares

Hey people! I am back again with some great information. I have searched over the internet to pick out what I wanted to talk about next and it is Solar Flares. What is a solar flare exactly? Well a solar flare is a sudden and rapid change in light and brightness. A solar flare happens when the magnetic energy in the solar atmosphere is released rapidly. With that being said, Corey Paul, an astronomer who was interviewed by fox news, says that experts know after watching the Sun for hundreds of years that the Sun goes through an eleven year cycle being relatively quiet and very active and violent. 2013 is the peak of that eleven year cycle. To go more in depth on what a solar flare really is let’s start in the atmosphere of the Sun. The outer most atmosphere of the Sun called the Corona which is made of rarefied gas. At the section of the Sun, this gas can be hundreds of millions of degrees Kelvin and each flare can be 10 to 20 million degrees Kelvin and can be up to 100 million degrees Kelvin. The flares, like I stated earlier, coincide with the suns 11 year cycle. To explain further, when the Sun is at its minimum flares are at their minimum. Now, in 2013, the Sun is at its peak solar flare activity and could launch a large solar flare. This is important because scientists are predicting that the Earth is in the direct line of one of these flares. (I am not talking about the end of the world. I am not one of those skeptics. As you may know I love space and talking about every aspect of it.) The Earth has protection from these solar flares by something called the magnetic field. This field surrounds us from north to south poles. Once a solar flare hits the Earth, which is not an uncommon thing, the poles display a magnificent display of lights at the poles. It is now 2013 and the Sun is preparing itself to release one large flare which is expected to do trillions of dollars of damage. NASA assures that the destruction of Earth will not occur. NASA has records stating that even the strongest solar storms will not blow away our atmosphere. So what will happen when a massive solar flare hits the Earth?  Basically, the flare comes at Earth at millions of miles per hour. The flare is magnetized and Earth is also like a big magnet. Once the flare hits the Earth, which would make electricity go haywire. This can lead to wide spread blackouts, it can overload our satellites and fry our radio and GPS transmissions, which has happened before in 1858-59. Even with being hit like that within this amount of time still would not be enough to destroy the Earth or the atmosphere. That was the last gigantic flare which was 100 times bigger than the Earth. Evidence that we have been hit before (and survived) is recorded in the glaciers, buried in time. This shows we can get hit by something of this size and proportion and still make it through and survive. You can look forward to a massive worldwide blackout but not the end of the world.

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