by IB Times Staff Reporter
August 8, 2011

from IBTimes Website

Spectacular Photos of Solar Flares Detected by NASA
(Photo: NASA)

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal agency that focuses on the condition of the oceans and atmosphere, said a severe solar storm could cause global disruptions in GPS systems, power grids, satellite communications, and airline communications.

The Sun Could Unleash Severe Solar Storms in the Future,

Causing Global Communication Chaos
 

With solar activity expected to peak around 2013, the Sun is entering a particularly active time and big flares like the recent one will likely be common during the next few years.

Most solar flares will only cause minor problems with satellites and power grids, but a major flare in the mid-19^th century blocked the nascent telegraph system, and some scientists believe that another such event is now overdue.

In a huge solar storm back in 1859, telegraph offices worldwide were hit, some telegraph operators reported electric shocks, the telegraph systems malfunctioned and even paper caught fire. It's the strongest solar storm on record - and is called the “Carrington Event” - which is named after Richard Carrington, who viewed and reported on the solar flare of Sept. 1, 1859.

Now, flash forward:

In 1989, six million people in Quebec, Canada were left without power for several hours when a solar storm took down a power grid.

According to a report by the National Research Council in 2008, a solar storm similar to the ones in the past could cause up to $2 trillion dollars in damage across the globe today.

The NOAA predicted four “extreme” solar emissions which could threaten the planet this decade. Similarly, NASA warned that a peak in the sun's magnetic energy cycle and the number of sun spots or flares around 2013 could enable extremely high radiation levels.

This is a particular problem in the U.S., especially and poses a severe threat especially in the eastern U.S. Several federal government studies suggest that this extreme solar activity and emissions may result in complete blackouts for years in some areas of the nation. Moreover, there may also be disruption of power supply for years, or even decades, as geomagnetic currents attracted by the storm could debilitate the transformers.

Last month, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said U.S. plants affected by a blackout should be able to cope without electricity for at least eight hours and should have procedures to keep the reactor and spent-fuel pool cool for 72 hours.

Nuclear plants depend on standby batteries and backup diesel generators. Most standby power systems would continue to function after a severe solar storm, but supplying the standby power systems with adequate fuel, when the main power grids are offline for years, could become a very critical problem.

If the spent fuel rod pools at the country's 104 nuclear power plants lose their connection to the power grid, the current regulations aren't sufficient to guarantee those pools won't boil over - exposing the hot, zirconium-clad rods and sparking fires that would release deadly radiation.

A report by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory said that over the standard 40-year license term of nuclear power plants, solar flare activity enables a 33 percent chance of long-term power loss, a risk that significantly outweighs that of major earthquakes and tsunamis.

A solar flare is caused when an intense burst of radiation comes from the release of magnetic energy associated with sunspots. Flares are the solar system's largest explosive events.

A coronal mass ejection happens when the outer solar magnetic fields are closed, often above sunspot groups, and the confined solar atmosphere can suddenly and violently release bubbles of gas and magnetic fields.

Sun Unleashes an Earth-directed...

X6.9 Class Flare

-   NASA   -

August 10, 2011

from IBTimes Website

The sun on Tuesday emitted an Earth-directed X6.9 flare at 3:48 a.m. EDT, as measured by the NOAA GOES satellite, according to NASA.

The Solar flare peaked at 4:05 a.m..

These gigantic bursts of radiation cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to harm humans on the ground, however, they can disrupt the atmosphere and disrupt GPS and communications signals. In this case, it appears the flare is strong enough to potentially cause some radio communication blackouts.

It also produced increased solar energetic proton radiation - enough to affect humans in space if they do not protect themselves.

There was also a coronal mass ejection (CME) associated with this flare. CMEs are another solar phenomenon that can send solar particles into space and affect electronic systems in satellites and on Earth.

However, this CME is not traveling toward and Earth so no Earth-bound effects are expected.

The biggest flares are known as "X-class flares" based on a classification system that divides solar flares according to their strength.

The smallest ones are A-class (near background levels), followed by B, C, M and X. Similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes, each letter represents a 10-fold increase in energy output. So an X is ten times an M and 100 times a C. Within each letter class there is a finer scale from 1 to 9.

C-class and smaller flares are too weak to noticeably affect Earth. M-class flares can cause brief radio blackouts at the poles and minor radiation storms that might endanger astronauts. And then come the X-class flares.

Although X is the last letter, there are flares more than 10 times the power of an X1, so X-class flares can go higher than 9. The most powerful flare measured with modern methods was in 2003, during the last solar maximum, and it was so powerful that it overloaded the sensors measuring it. The sensors cut out at X28.

The biggest X-class flares are by far the largest explosions in the solar system and are awesome to watch. Loops tens of times the size of Earth leap up off the sun's surface when the sun's magnetic fields cross over each other and reconnect.

In the biggest events, this reconnection process can produce as much energy as a billion hydrogen bombs.

This taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in extreme ultraviolet (131 angstrom) shows the August 9, 2011, X7 class flare which started at 3:48 AM EDT from sunspot 1263.

 

The brunt of the explosion was not Earth-directed.
 

 

An x-class flare began at 3:48 AM EDT on August 9, 2011 and peaked at 4:05 AM. The flare burst from sun spot region AR11263, before it rotated out of view.

 

The image here was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) in light at 304 Angstroms.
 

 

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft captured this image of a solar flare as it erupted from the sun early on Tuesday, October 28, 2003.

 

Source: IBTimes/NASA Date:08/10/2011