Largest Sunspot In a Quarter Century Spews Flares

schwit1 writes: The largest sunspot seen in about a quarter century has produced another powerful X-class flare today, the sixth in less than a week. "This was the sixth X-class solar flare from NOAA 2192, a record for the number of X-class flares generated by a single group so far this solar cycle. It was also the fourth X-class flare since last Friday, continuing a period of intense flaring activity. This sunspot group has grown again a bit, and maintains its magnetic complexity. A degradation of the HF radio-communication was observed over South-America, the Caribbean, and West-Africa." The last sentence is referring to some radio communications blackouts that have occurred in these areas because of the flares.

Re:

[ls671]

It's only giant alien space ships that drive straight into the sun thus causing solar flares. I have seen it on William Shatner's "Weird or What?" tv show.

Re:

[FatdogHaiku]

Fuel and oxygen... we'll be fine as long as there's no concentrated amount of great heat or other source of ignition.

Good to see it

[the_Bionic_lemming]

I'm glad we didn't enter into a maunder minimum like folks were nervous about.

Having no summer to grow food worldwide would be pretty devastating for many people.

Re:

[garyisabusyguy]

Does one BIG sunspot count for hundreds of little ones?

Re:

[the_Bionic_lemming]

I don't think sunspots can actually count - regardless of their size.

Re:

[I'm New Around Here]

Of course not. They have no fingers.

Re:

[Thanshin]

...Yet.

Re:

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Sure they do! Just thousands [holoscience.com] of them [wikimedia.org] that you just can't see without some optical help.

Re:

[SpankiMonki]

I'm glad we didn't enter into a maunder minimum like folks were nervous about.

I, for one, was hoping for a *extended* Maunder Minimum. Because global warming and stuff.

Re:

[Mashiki]

Even in the maunder minimum the growing was fine, harsher but fine. But considering during that minimum there was large solar flare events, it doesn't mean that we're not entering into one anyway.

Quarter Century

[Lotana]

Why not just say "In the last 25 years"?!

Re:Quarter Century

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Is that what a quarter century means?

Wow!

Re:

[flu1d]

Or the last 650 fourtnights

Re:

[Truth_Quark]

Or nearly 79 million Babylonian gesh.

Re:

[TheInternetGuy]

Why not just say "In the last 25 years"?!

Or 788400000000 milliseconds

Re: Quarter Century

[O('_')O_Bush]

Sensationalism. Quarter-century sounds a lot more impressive than "since about 1990".

Re: Quarter Century

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet I'm going to switch the wording on my resume that I keep updated just in case:

-Has been a Unix/Linux systems administrator for over one-fifth of a century!!

Much better.

Re:

[userw014]

Because it implies a range. A "about a quarter century" is (approximately) 25 years +/- 12.5 years (12.5 years to 37.5 years). Whereas 25 years is (approximately) 300 months +/- 6 months.

Or just because. Poetic license.

Remember not to ever split your infinitives.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for elevating the discussion. Now, feel free to go back to the clusterfuck site you think is better. Or just go. Away.

Re:

[Lotana]

What is there to discuss?

This is yet another sensetionalist blurb article: Oh no! A large sunspot! Communication might be affected!!! Once you discuss one of these useless stories, there is nothing left to discuss.

Yes, there is a sunspot. They occur all the time. So what?

Re:16 posts containing banal "jokes", 0 of any val

[TheRaven64]

So this is what Slashdot has become.

No, this is what Slashdot has always been. I started regularly reading Slashdot around 2000, and back then there were posts just like yours decrying the state of Slashdot today, pining for some golden age. And yet, looking at the archives, not much had changed.

Re:

[jafac]

I do not disagree with you.

Re:

[DNS-and-BIND]

I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit. In 1998-99, there were definitely a plethora of insightful posts contributed by smart people. There weren't even user-ids. Everyone just rejoiced that there was this cool science-based weblog out there. Then, it started getting popular, and what do you know, suddenly every single thread had some idiot claiming "First Post!" (which was a driver for the moderation system BTW). Huh...this is right about the time you joined...maybe you were part of the problem?

So this

Re:

[TheRaven64]

Let me guess. You were reading at +2 back then?

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[pegdhcp]

When I saw

A degradation of the HF radio-communication

part, I was puzzled. If that was a reference to a network close to Sun, they should not use HF on satellites. Then I read the whole sentence and felt sorry for the need of explanation...

Doctor Who

[three333]

Didn't the latest episode of Doctor Who tell us this already?

Sun spots earth. Pukes.

[tinkerton]

Ok, maybe I'm hineininterpretierung this a bit

Clearly Global Warming

[blogagog]

Recent computer models predicted that increased CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere would cause catastrophic sunspots. Yet more proof that global warming is real!

Re:

[lexlthr]

What is this quote from?