A handout picture shows Coronal Mass Ejection as viewed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory on June 7, 2011. The Sun unleashed an M-2 (medium-sized) solar flare, an S1-class (minor) radiation storm and a spectacular coronal mass ejection (CME) on June 7, 2011 from sunspot complex 1226-1227. The large cloud of particles mushroomed up and fell back down looking as if it covered an area of almost half the solar surface. The sun is entering a more active phase due to peak in 2013 on a roughly 11-year sunspot cycle, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said. Power supplies, air traffic control, communications and satellites can all be disrupted by storms. Picture taken June 7, 2011. – Reuters Photo
Luckily it just missed us............this time................
I just saw the movie “2012”. I now know what can happen with solar flares.
Although the intensity and spectrum radiated from the Sun as CME’s varies quite a bit, that is not the determining factor in whether we could suffer extensive outages.
It is the AIM. This one mostly skipped off to one side. There was another one several years ago, but It had primarily XRAY radiation, and it was a 1000 times stronger than any previous ‘known’ Flare or CME.
It too, got shoved past the Earth by our atmosphere and electromagnetic shielding. Had it hit dead on, you and I wouldn’t be communicating via the internet (or much of anything else).
There are like a jillion ‘directions’ a CME/Flare can travel in, and none of them are on a line direct to Earth.
There is only ONE direction that would hit us dead center, and that is why it doesn’t happen very often. The SUN does, however, shoot off these Flares/CMEs on a regular basis, many of them just as high intensity.