Meet Your New Favorite Solar Flare – TODAY.

Are you experiencing a slowdown in the speed at which you download kittens that look like Hitler?  It might be the Sun’s fault.  (Not really, but I can’t think of a way to open this.)  On Monday, the Sun shot off an X 2 flare aimed at Earth.  Solar flares are large eruptions in the atmosphere of the Sun.  The white spot in the center of the above photo supplied by NASA shows this particular flare.  They follow an 11 year cycle between activity, and dormancy, and are currently ramping up to a peak in May of 2013.  The cycle is a result of the Sun’s magnetic field reversing itself.  Every 11 years, its north pole becomes its south pole, and vice versa.

Solar flares are measured according to a scale that starts with A, B, C, M, or X.  A is the small end of the scale, while X is the large end.  The largest flare ever recorded was an X 28, or the equivalent to a magnitude 25 earthquake back in 2003. X flares, if they are aimed at Earth, are the ones we need to worry about.  While the smaller ones may either bounce harmlessly off our magnetic field, or cause aurorae, the larger M and X class flares could disrupt communications here on Earth.  Satellites don’t like excess energy, and solar flares are a massive stream of protons that can destroy these things.  Already, there are interruptions with radio communication being reported in southern China.

The flare kicked off on Monday, and took eight minutes to hit Earth, because it travels at the speed of light, However, with the larger flares comes something called a Coronal Mass Ejection, which takes several days to reach Earth.  This is where the nasty stuff is.  A CME back in 1989 knocked out power to 6 million people in Quebec for more than 9 hours.

The CME from this flare is expected to hit sometime today.  While nobody is telling people to run to Arken’s fall-out shelter, they do expect some hiccups in communications systems over the next few days.

This video will show you what the solar flare looks like, and help you to understand that the Sun is one giant disco.  The juicy stuff hits about 20 seconds in.