Three More Solar Flares

Evil Adrian writes "Space.com reports that the sun shot off three more solar flares on Monday. This is quite a historic period for solar activity." The article breaks down the recent flares, and what the effects have been. Update: 11/05 01:57 GMT by T : cyberMalex writes "Space.com is reporting the 10th in a string of major solar flares which have been errupting from the sun over the past two weeks. "This one saturated the X-ray detectors on the NOAA's GOES satellites that monitor the Sun. The jury is therefore out on the definitive classification of the flare." "Other scientists have indicated the flare may indeed be an X20 or stronger. Only one X20 event has been seen in recent years, and it was not Earth-directed and had little effect.""

It's not the # of flares .. it's

[jaxdahl]

It's the size of these flares that's unusual. Never have astronomers seen 2 Jupiter sized sunspots tranversing the sun at the same time. The number of sunspots is about normal for this time in the 11 year solar cycle. Here's a nice summary page: http://www.n3kl.org/sun/noaa.html [n3kl.org]

The most activity in 1150 years

[Bendebecker]

Another good article about this here [newscientist.com].

Re:Historic Period?

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientists have been using beryllium content in icebergs to trace the general prominence of sunspots and their activity over the last 1150 years. This activity exceeds any on that record as well.

Re:It's not the # of flares .. it's

[JamesD_UK]

This [nasa.gov] page from Nasa's Astronomy Picture of the day site shows some amazing images of these sun spots.

Re:Historic Period?

[skarmor]

Sorry, I might not be all that caught up on my solar flare monitoring, but how long have we been doing that exactly?

Richard Christopher Carrington published his Observation of the Spots of the Sun in 1863. He was observing a group of sun spots when, "...two patches of intensely bright and white light broke out."

His description:

"I saw I was an unprepared witness of a very different affair. I therefore noted down the time by the chronometer, and seeing the outburst to be very rapidly on the increase, and being somewhat flurried by the surprise, I hastily ran to call some one to witness the exhibition with me, and on returning within 60 seconds, was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled. Very shortly afterwards the last trace was gone. In this lapse of 5 minutes, the two patches of light traversed a space of about 35,000 miles."

So I guess we've been monitoring solar flares for some 140 years...

Re:Biblical

[scottcha+4]

Actually it's the book of Revelation not Revelations. And yes you SHOULD read up on it.

Re:Historic Period?

[droovee]

Not entirely true. The CBC has an article [www.cbc.ca] today. A choice quote:

Direct observations of sunspots go back to the early 17th century, corresponding to the invention of the telescope.

To get data on sunspots from before observations were possible, Ilya Usoskin, a geophysicist who worked with colleagues at the University of Oulu in Finland and the Max Planck Institute in Germany, examined ice core samples from Greenland and Antarctica.

Re:Anyone see anything?

[FrostedWheat]

Here you go:

http://www.sec.noaa.gov/pmap/index.html [noaa.gov]

That shows the current aurora activity for both poles. Click on the one nearest to you and wait until there's some activity near you :)

Even if the activity looks quite far from you, check anyway. We had lots of aurora visable here even tho the map showed it about a hundred miles away.

Re:Historic Period?

[pclminion]

Well, considering that the word "historic" means "within the realm of written records," then yes, this is the biggest event that has been recorded in writing. There's a reason we call the dinosaurs (as an example) "prehistoric" and not "historic." They came BEFORE written history. Since these flares are the largest recorded in written history, the term "historic" is apt.

So yes, the Sun has most likely had numerous PREhistoric solar flare events of this magnitude. But none in recorded history. It's a historic event.

Sincerely,
Your local anal-retentive

Re:Historic Period?

[kevlar]

Whats even more interesting is that there are fairly solid theories that solar flare activity is directly related to the mean global temperature. In other words, the green house effect may very well be *mostly* caused by the Sun, rather than CO2 in the atmosphere.

Re:Historic Period?

[Bytesmiths]

"Historic period in solar flares? Sorry, I might not be all that caught up on my solar flare monitoring, but how long have we been doing that exactly? It can't be more than in the last 50 years..."

That's what "history" means -- as long as humans have been keeping track. Otherwise, it's known as "prehistoric," as in dinosaurs and cave men.

Re:Solar Observations

[Jerf]

Why pull a number out of your ass when you can pull a number off of the back of an envelope? ;-)

10,000 years of the human race / 10,000,000,000 years of the sun existing =~ .0001% .

I pulled the sun's age from memory and where you draw the line for "the human race" is somewhat a matter of choice, but it should be within a magnitude and a half, which is all that matters here.

Gets even worse if you want to talk about humans really observing the sun and not merely looking at it; guesstimate 100 years and drop another two factors of magnitude off that number for .000001% of the sun's life.

Re:Biblical

[Theatetus]

First off: why?

Secondly, it's Revelation or if you prefer Apocalypse (which is just Greek for "Revelation"). Books back then didn't have titles, and this one simply comes from the first word of the book.

Thirdly, it's a very thinly-disguised mid-2nd-century political invective about the fall of Rome and Judaism and the establishment of a Christian hegemony in eastern Europe and western Asia, not the end of the world.

Fourthly, in most modern Christian's minds it has been hopelessly confused with Daniel and John's letters (for example, most people you ask will tell you that Revelation mentions the Anti-Christ; it does not. The only biblical references to "antichrist" are in John's letters, and it's "antichrists" not "The Antichrist").

Fifthly, the reference to the sun in Revelation is:

"I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth" (Rev. 6:12)

which is the exact opposite of what the sun is doing right now.

Sixthly and lastly, memorizing books about imaginary tribal deities strikes me as an immense waste of time, but if it works for you, more power to you.

Re:LOL

[lyphorm]

Well, there was this movie [imdb.com]...