02:16 PM Sunday, October 29, 2023
Image of one of the most powerful solar explosions in history
The Live Science magazine website published a photo, which it described as historic, taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft of the US space agency NASA.
The image shows a massive X-class solar flare that occurred on October 28, 2003. This monster solar storm is one of the largest solar storms in recorded history.
Live Science said: During the spooky season of 2003, the Sun unleashed an unusually powerful series of solar flares, known as “Halloween solar storms.” It unleashed a high-speed burst of electrically charged particles, called a coronal mass ejection (CME), that impacted Earth the next day.
The monster eruption was an X-class flare — the most powerful the sun can produce, according to NASA.
The plume of plasma erupted from a sunspot larger than 13 Earths, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The resulting coronal ejection temporarily disabled half of the satellites orbiting Earth at the time, and forced astronauts on the International Space Station to take shelter from the radiation.
On Earth, the resulting magnetic storm lasted for 3 days, temporarily knocking out radio signals across large parts of the world, and causing permanent damage to electrical infrastructure in some places.
Experts say this powerful storm could be the largest since the Carrington Event in 1859.
If a major solar storm like the one in 2003 hit Earth today, the repercussions could be much more terrifying because there are thousands of other satellites in orbit and we depend on them much more than we did then.
All indications are that the Sun’s upcoming period of peak activity, the solar maximum, will be the strongest in decades.
