(Image Credit:NASA)
As our Sun reaches the peak of its 11 year solar cycle, it has put on a show this week, erupting a large number of solar flares, with multiple X-class flares – the largest classification.
All this action is throwing alot of radiation towards our little green Earth, which can cause alot of disruption with global communications. 4 blackout warnings have been issued by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration due to the Sun’s activity.
Since October 23rd, there have been 24 medium strength M-class solar flares, and 4 of the more powerful X-class flares.
Solar Physicist Holly Gilbert who works at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, had this to say in an interview with LA Times:
‘For those of us who study the dynamics of the sun, it is exciting because it gives us more events to study.’ ‘You get a tangled bunch of magnetic fields, and they get too tangled and too stressed, they end up erupting.’
Check out more information on the flares and the coronal mass injections here at the Daily Mail, with pictures and video.
