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Named Miyake events after the lead author of the first study to describe them, the spikes occur roughly once every 1,000 years or so and are recorded as sudden increases in the radiocarbon levels of ancient tree rings. The leading theory among scientists is that Miyake events are solar flares that are 80 times more powerful than the strongest flare ever recorded. But a new study...suggests that the origin of the radiation bursts could be even more mysterious than first thought. Scientists have spotted six Miyake events in tree rings so far, indicated by sudden, single-year leaps in the concentrations...

Initially dubbed Swift J1913.1+1946...now re-named GRB221009A. 2.4 billion light-years away...18 teraelectronvolts. [T]hough this proximity happens to be 20 times closer than the average long gamma-ray burst, it poses absolutely no danger to life on Earth. Rather, it's tremendously exciting – an event that could These bursts mark the end of the life of a massive star – a supernova or hypernova. They can also emerge from a collision between two neutron stars. Different gamma-ray burst profiles mean different kinds of explosions, which fade in different ways. When astronomers observed a collision between two neutron stars in 2017, it produced a...

Yes, it could happen, but it would take a giant solar storm... Solar storms...occur when the sun releases an intense burst of electromagnetic radiation. This disturbance throws off waves of energy that travel outward, impacting other bodies in the solar system, including Earth. When the wayward electromagnetic waves interact with Earth's own magnetic field, they have a couple of effects. The first is that they cause electric currents to flow in Earth's upper atmosphere, heating the air...These geomagnetic storms can create beautiful auroras to appear over polar regions, but they can also disrupt radio signals and GPS. What's more, as...

The solar flare, classified as M8 in the second-most energetic category of flares, departed from the sun at 5:49 a.m. EDT (0949 GMT) on Friday, disrupting shortwave radio communications in the sun-facing parts of the world. According to Spaceweather.com(opens in new tab), amateur radio operators in Africa and the Middle East could have experienced signal distortion for up to one hour after the flare. The U.K. space weather forecaster Met Office predicts there is a chance of further flares today before the sunspot AR3098 disappears behind the sun's limb (the edge of the sun's visible disk). Space weather forecasters think...

The Sun has been up to some pretty intense shenanigans lately, but a recent eruption on the far side looks to be absolute science gold. On the evening of September 5 GMT, an enormous coronal mass ejection (CME) was recorded exploding on the far side of the Sun, sending a radiation storm out across the Solar System. It was a type known as a halo CME, in which an expanding halo of hot gas can be seen spewing out around the entire Sun. Sometimes this means that the CME is headed straight for Earth. However, this eruption was on the...

An enormous explosion erupted from behind the sun on Monday, and scientists think its source could be rotating toward the Earth in the coming days. On September 5, NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft recorded a significant coronal mass ejection (CME)—an eruption of plasma and magnetic activity from the sun's atmosphere—that occurred on the far side of the sun. Since the CME did not occur in the direction of Earth, scientists spotted it by its "halo," a giant shockwave that could be seen from Earth's position on the other side of the sun. The halo of the huge coronal mass ejection on September...

A HUGE sunspot which doubled in size over a 24-hour period is now directly facing Earth, meaning a large solar flare could strike the planet. The sunspot, known as AR3038, doubled in size between Sunday and Monday night. Now, it has turned to face the Earth, sparking concerns that rapid solar winds could pelt towards the Blue Planet. And stunning footage from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory on Sunday shows how the huge sunspot has been evolving. Experts at Spaceweather.com explained: "Yesterday, sunspot AR3038 was big. "Today, it's enormous. The fast-growing sunspot has doubled in size in only 24 hours. "AR3038...

The sunspot that has been growing in size recently is known as AR3038. Footage from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory on Sunday shows how the sunspot has evolved over the past day or so, twisting and contorting. "Yesterday, sunspot AR3038 was big. Today, it's enormous," reads the SpaceWeather.com website. "The fast-growing sunspot has doubled in size in only 24 hours." The magnetic field associated with the sunspot means it could potentially send an M-class solar flare at Earth—the second-strongest type. However, it is not known whether this will be the case. As of Monday morning the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's...

Just days after the Sun blasted Earth with an M-Class solar flare which created an unexpected G1-Class Geomagnetic Storm, the sun erupted another M-class solar flare towards the Earth earlier today. Today’s flare blasted the Earth with X-rays and UV radiation, triggering a shortwave radio black out over portions of the globe. On Saturday, NOAA forecasters said there was a risk of additional solar flares through today and as predicted, it occured. While Saturday’s solar flare erupted from sunspot Active Region-2911; today’s flare came from Active Regions 2908. In a statement released by NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center today, they...

Yet another series of solar flares(opens in new tab) series shimmied out from the sun on Friday (Aug. 26) after a dazzling show of green-hued auroras(opens in new tab) crashed through the atmosphere just days ago. "Sunspot AR3089 is crackling with a series of intensifying M-class [moderate] solar flares," SpaceWeather.com(opens in new tab) said in a Friday update. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured an especially powerful flare at 7:16 a.m. EDT (1116 GMT) as populations in Europe and Africa experienced a brief radio blackout. A huge ejection of charged particles from the sun(opens in new tab), known as a coronal...

The sunspot, known as AR3085, has also been shooting off several minor solar flares, though nothing strong enough to be disruptive on Earth. The sunspot, known as AR3085, has also been shooting off several minor solar flares, though nothing strong enough to be disruptive on Earth. Sunspots are regions on the sun where magnetic fields are so intense that some heat is prevented from reaching the sun's surface. As such, sunspots may appear as dark patches. Due to the intense magnetic fields, sunspots are known sources of solar activity. When these magnetic field lines suddenly shift, a vast amount of...

The Daocheng Solar Radio Telescope (DSRT) is under construction on a plateau in Sichuan province, southwest China. When completed, it will consist of 313 dishes, each with a diameter of 19.7 feet (6 meters), forming a circle with a circumference of 1.95 miles (3.14 kilometers). The telescope array will image the sun in radio waves to study coronal mass ejections (CMEs), large eruptions of charged particles from the sun's upper atmosphere, the corona. The project also includes the Chinese Spectral Radioheliograph for monitoring solar activity, which is being constructed (opens in new tab)in Inner Mongolia. The radioheliograph will consist of...

One of those bursts, called a coronal mass ejection, or CME, is expected to collide and consume another, creating what's called a cannibal CME event. According to The Weather Channel, these events can spark strong geomagnetic storms — and in this case, it's headed in our direction. NOAA expects that the CMEs will hit on Thursday, but before they do, the agency said that Earth will also be blasted on Wednesday with relatively fast solar winds, known as a recurrent coronal hole high speed stream. The solar winds alone could trigger a minor geomagnetic storm on Wednesday, but those conditions...

Acloud of "dark plasma" erupted from the sun on Sunday and is predicted to make contact with Earth on Wednesday, giving rise to the possibility of a minor geomagnetic storm. The eruption of material is known as a coronal mass ejection (CME)—a cloud of charged solar gas and magnetic fields. It was launched toward Earth on August 14 from a region of the sun known as AR3076. Solar activity news site spaceweather.com stated on Monday morning that the "plume of dark plasma" was traveling at over 1.3 million miles per hour. At that speed, it's expected to take a few...

The sun has spat out two clouds of plasma in the past two days, which might trigger beautiful aurora displays observable much farther south than usual. The two coronal mass ejections (CMEs), eruptions of charged particles from the sun's upper atmosphere known as the corona, burst from the sun on Aug. 14 and 15 respectively, according to the U.K. forecaster Met Office (opens in new tab). As the CMEs cross the 900,000-mile (150 million kilometers) distance between the star and our planet, they might cannibalize each other, according to SpaceWeather.com (opens in new tab), creating a single super powerful CME....

After analyzing data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and several other observatories, astronomers have concluded that the bright red supergiant star Betelgeuse quite literally blew its top in 2019, losing a substantial part of its visible surface and producing a gigantic Surface Mass Ejection (SME). This is something never before seen in a normal star’s behavior. Credit: NASA, ESA, Elizabeth Wheatley (STScI)Our Sun routinely blows off parts of its tenuous outer atmosphere, the corona, in an event known as a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). However, the Betelgeuse SME blasted off 400 billion times as much mass as a typical CME!...

STEVE (short for "strong thermal velocity enhancement") is a long, thin line of hot gas that slices through the sky for hundreds of miles. The hot air inside STEVE can blaze at more than 5,500 degrees Fahrenheit (3,000 degrees Celsius) and move roughly 500 times faster than the air on each side of it, satellite observations have shown. Whereas the northern lights occur when charged solar particles bash into molecules in Earth's upper atmosphere, STEVE appears much lower in the sky, in a region called the subauroral zone. That likely means solar particles aren't directly responsible for STEVE, Live Science...

The spot is so big it's changing the way the sun vibrates, according to spaceweather.com. If the dark spot hurls a blob of plasma at Earth, it could disrupt our magnetic field, affecting GPS and communication satellites orbiting close to Earth as well as airplane navigation systems. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center issued a forecast for an unsettled geomagnetic field around Earth on Aug. 6 and 7, which could means auroras, though whether it becomes a full-blown solar storm is not yet clear. The telltale vibrational changes showed up in a helioseismic map near...

The explosion was spotted on July 31 at around 2309 UT and Earth-orbiting satellites registered a long-lasting C9.3-class solar flare. "The intensity is probably an underestimate because it was partially eclipsed by the edge of the sun. Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) saw hot debris flying away from the blast site," spaceweather, which tracks the solar activity, reported. While the explosion was powerful, experts have predicted that Earth is not in the line of fire from the Sun. Scientists are expected to get a view of the active region later this week as it comes to sight. With the sun’s...

Most estimates have relied heavily on information gleaned from Icelandic sagas, but since these were only written down centuries after the fact and talk about things like glittery one-footed assassins, researchers have wisely taken them with a grain of salt.But the new study, published today in the journal Nature, has pinpointed the Viking presence in North America to an exact year: 1021