MOSCOW, September 6 - RIA Novosti. Today, the Sun has experienced the most powerful outburst in the past 12 years, resulting from the merger of the two largest sunspot groups, reports the Laboratory of X-ray Astronomy of the Sun of the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
"Events of this power are among the largest that our star can only produce and which are formed only under very rare, unique conditions, usually at the stage of the peak of solar activity. How did it happen that an outbreak of this level has occurred now, against the background of a solar minimum , scientists have yet to figure it out, "astronomers report.
Solar flares, depending on the power of X-ray radiation, are divided into five classes: A, B, C, M and X. The minimum class A0.0 corresponds to a radiation power in the Earth's orbit of 10 nanowatts per square meter... When moving to the next letter, the power increases 10 times.
Today's flare belongs to the last class, X, and has been given a score of X9.3, making it one of the five most powerful explosions on the surface of the Sun ever recorded. According to scientists, it happened at the point that "looks" at the Earth, and therefore its impact on our planet will be maximum. While its consequences for life on Earth, astronauts and satellites in orbit cannot be predicted, we will know about this only in a few days.
According to the laboratory specialists, the current level of solar activity has gone beyond the ten-point scale, reaching a mark of 10.3, and is now in the so-called "black" area.
A flash of enormous power occurred on the Sun on September 6. This is the largest such phenomenon on a star in the past 12 years. The flare arose as a result of the merger of the two largest sunspot groups, according to the Laboratory of X-ray Astronomy of the Sun of the P.N. Lebedev.
“Events of this power are among the largest that our star is capable of producing and which form only under very rare, unique conditions, usually at the stage of the peak of solar activity. How it happened that an outbreak of such a level occurred now, against the background of the solar minimum, scientists have yet to figure out, ”the astronomers report.
Solar flares, depending on the power of X-ray radiation, are divided into five classes: A, B, C, M and X. The minimum class A0.0 corresponds to a radiation power in the Earth's orbit of 10 nanowatts per square meter. With the transition to the next letter, the power increases 10 times.
Today's flare is in the last class, X, and has been rated X9.3, making it one of the five most powerful explosions on the Sun's surface ever recorded.
According to scientists, it occurred at the point that is facing the Earth, so its impact on our planet will be maximum. While it is impossible to predict the consequences for life on Earth, astronauts and satellites in orbit, we will “learn about it only in a few days”.
As the laboratory specialists said, the current level of solar activity has gone beyond the ten-point scale, reaching 10.3, and is now in the so-called "black" area.
Previously, scientists from the P.N. Lebedev was able to penetrate the mystery of the release of energy in solar microflares - one of the most unusual manifestations of solar activity, still beyond the capabilities of modern telescopes.
These results will help to improve the accuracy of forecasting solar activity and, as a result, space weather: magnetic storms and other terrestrial phenomena of cosmic origin. The research was supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation and published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Scientists have long been interested in the paradox associated with the fact that for heating the external solar atmosphere - corona - up to the observed gigantic temperatures of 1-2 million degrees, about 10 times more energy is required than is released during all solar flares combined.
In the solution, the specialists were helped by the data of the Russian space observatory "KORONAS-Foton", which worked in orbit in 2009. In the images obtained in 2009, against the background of very low solar activity, Russian scientists managed to "see" about five hundred microflares, some of which were 1000 times fainter than the previously available lower limit of observations.
In almost all of these events, contrary to expectations, scientists were able to detect the appearance in the corona of a hot plasma with a temperature of 3-4 million degrees and above.
The data obtained turned out to be so much that it was possible to construct the temperature distribution in the microflares and predict where it rests on "zero", that is, when the flares really stop heating the corona plasma. It turned out that this boundary lies in the region of events 10 thousand times weaker than the current observation threshold. Such weak phenomena no longer even belong to micro-, but to nanoflares - semi-hypothetical events on the Sun, existing so far largely only on paper.
On August 21, 2017, a solar eclipse passed through the entire United States for the first time in the last century. It is called the "Great American Eclipse" because it is the first solar eclipse since the formation of America (1776), the full phase of which can only be observed in the United States.
The duration of the solar eclipse at a single point did not exceed three minutes, so a large number of fans spent thousands of dollars to chase the moon's shadow on specially chartered passenger planes for this purpose.
This event allowed those on board not only to avoid cloudy weather interfering with observations, but also to increase its duration up to seven minutes - that is, almost three times. According to Kelly Beaty, editor of Sky & Telescope magazine, observing the eclipse from a liner is nothing like a ground-based experience.
“The sky there is much more transparent and therefore darker. This makes the crown look brighter and more exciting. It really looks like an electrical phenomenon, ”she said.
The eclipse affected the behavior of animals. At nightfall at the Nashville City Zoo, giraffes and rhinos began to scamper around their enclosures. Zoo workers said they had never seen such agility in animals. Pink flamingos huddled in a flock and stood there until the sun came out again.
The first flare, recorded at 09:10 GMT, was the most powerful since 2015, but it was soon overshadowed by a second. A flare erupted from a large sunspot, which the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Center assigned class X9.3. Astronomers saw the last X9 outbreak in 2009. The current outbreak occurred at a point that is located towards the Earth, so its impact on the planet can be maximum.
“Events of this power are among the largest that our star is capable of producing and which are formed only under very rare, unique conditions, as a rule, at the stage of the peak of solar activity,” the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences said in the Laboratory of X-ray Astronomy of the Sun.
Why an outbreak of this level has occurred now, against the background of the solar minimum, scientists have yet to figure out.
In total, flares are divided into five classes: A, B, C, M and X, which differ in the power of X-ray radiation.
The center said the outbreaks were accompanied by radio disruptions. The high frequency communications on the sunny side of the earth were malfunctioning for an hour, as was the low frequency communications used for navigation.
Solar flares occur when the Sun's magnetic field, which forms dark spots on the surface of a star, twists and ejects energy, overheating the surface of a star. In addition to interfering with radio communications at various frequencies, Class X flares can cause radiation storms in the Earth's upper atmosphere. In addition, during such flares, the Sun can eject a cloud of charged plasma, which astronomers call coronal mass ejection.
“The flares were accompanied by radio signals that spoke of a possible coronal mass ejection. However, we will have to wait for the coronagraph results to find out whether it was this time or not, ”the Space.com portal quotes the words of the center's specialist Rob Steenberg.
The spot in the active solar region 2673 is the second largest and can contain seven of our planets in width, and nine in height. On September 5, the same spot released an M-class solar flare, which was accompanied by a coronal ejection directed towards the Earth. A charged plasma cloud that reaches our planet in 3 or 4 days could damage satellites, as well as energy and communication systems.
Despite such events, scientists say that the Sun is approaching its 11-year minimum.
“We are heading towards the solar minimum, so such events are especially interesting, they just will not happen so often. Class X outbreaks will not be a weekly event, but although activity will drop, their potential strength will not diminish, ”Steenberg said.
The anticipation of a Class X solar flare prompted a number of media outlets to recall the famous "Carrington Event" - the most powerful solar storm in history that occurred in September 1859. Then the British astronomer Richard Carrington recorded a powerful flare, which was also accompanied by a coronal mass ejection directed towards the Earth. All over the world, such intense aurora borealis were observed that in their glow it was possible to read newspapers, as in daylight, NASA historians describe those events.
The northern lights were then observed even in tropical latitudes over Cuba, Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador and Hawaii.
In pre-electric 1859, the most significant consequence of the Carrington Event was the failure of telegraph systems in Europe and North America... However, if a similar flare and coronal ejection happened today, the consequences could be much more tangible.
- Northern Lights.
Some experts believe that if this event repeats, the inhabitants of the Earth should expect a synchronous failure of cellular communications, GPS systems and power supply. A separate task would be the simultaneous mass landing of aircraft in the absence of satellite positioning. Cascading power outages would follow.
It is believed that the cosmonauts who were in low-earth orbit at this time would be in particular danger. When working outside the station or spaceships they would have only a few minutes after the first flash of light to hide inside from the stream of solar particles in time.
According to NASA calculations, a repetition of the "Carrington Event" at this level of development would cause losses to humanity in the amount of up to $ 2 trillion, and it would take about 10 years to fully recover.
A complete renewal of the Earth's satellite fleet alone would require about $ 70 billion.