Turn, Turn, Turn! Explosion on Sun’s farside raises solar storm threat for Earth? | Tech News

Turn, Turn, Turn! Explosion on Sun’s farside raises solar storm threat for Earth?

A huge blast was spotted coming out from the farside of the Sun. This blast site will face the Earth in about a week. Can it send a dangerous solar storm to Earth?

By: HT TECH
| Updated on: Nov 02 2022, 11:02 IST
Think you know our Sun? Check out THESE 5 stunning facts
Solar storm
1/5 The Sun is the largest object in our solar system and is a 4.5 billion-year-old star – a hot glowing ball of hydrogen and helium at the center of the solar system. It is about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from Earth, and without its energy, life as we know it could not exist here on our home planet. (Pixabay)
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2/5 The Sun’s volume would need 1.3 million Earths to fill it. Its gravity holds the solar system together, keeping everything from the biggest planets to the smallest bits of debris in orbit around it. The hottest part of the Sun is its core, where temperatures top 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius). The Sun’s activity, from its powerful eruptions to the steady stream of charged particles it sends out, influences the nature of space throughout the solar system. (NASA)
Solar storm
3/5 According to NASA, measuring a “day” on the Sun is complicated because of the way it rotates. It doesn't spin as a single, solid ball. This is because the Sun’s surface isn't solid like Earth's. Instead, the Sun is made of super-hot, electrically charged gas called plasma. This plasma rotates at different speeds on different parts of the Sun. At its equator, the Sun completes one rotation in 25 Earth days. At its poles, the Sun rotates once on its axis every 36 Earth days. (NASA)
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4/5 Above the Sun’s surface are its thin chromosphere and the huge corona (crown). This is where we see features such as solar prominences, flares, and coronal mass ejections. The latter two are giant explosions of energy and particles that can reach Earth. (Pixabay)
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5/5 The Sun doesn’t have moons, but eight planets orbit it, at least five dwarf planets, tens of thousands of asteroids, and perhaps three trillion comets and icy bodies. Also, several spacecraft are currently investigating the Sun including Parker Solar Probe, STEREO, Solar Orbiter, SOHO, Solar Dynamics Observatory, Hinode, IRIS, and Wind. (Pixabay)
Solar storm
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Explosion on Sun hints at a strong solar storm threat for Earth. (NASA)

Just a couple of days ago, the Earth suffered the Halloween-day solar storm attack from our Sun that appeared to have a scary smiley plastered on it face due to some dark spots emerging suddenly on its surface. These dark spots (also known as sunspots) are sites with extremely high magnetic fields which get destabilized and explode. This is how the coronal mass ejections (CME) get shot towards the Earth. While the dark spots are gone, worse news for our planet has come. A massive explosion on the farside of the Sun was seen earlier today. This new blast site, which could be a potentially unstable sunspot, is going to come into Earth's view in a week as the Sun turns on its axis. This has raised concerns for a dangerous solar storm strike on Earth soon.

The development was reported by SpaceWeather which noted on its website, “Something just exploded on the farside of the sun. The blast hurled a CME into space during the late hours of Oct. 31st…The blast site will rotate onto the Earthside of the sun about a week from now ”. The website also shared a short video of the moment the Sun exploded, which you can see here. You can also see Mercury on the right and Venus on the left. The gaseous material coming out from the explosion is the CME which causes solar storms.

Earth can face a powerful solar storm in a week

As it is extremely difficult to gauge just how dangerous a sunspot is before we can see it, right now not much can be said about the explosion site on the far side of the Sun. However, considering the intensity of the explosion, the possible sunspot can be one of the largest we have seen this year. There are two possibilities at the moment. The first is that after the explosion, the sunspot has expelled most of the destabilizing magnetic fields. If that is the case, then the sunspot will disappear and the Earth has nothing to fear about.

However, conversely, the sunspot could have also gotten worse as a result of the explosion and grown in size. If that's the case, then it can destabilize a larger area and cause an even bigger explosion. That would mean bad news for Earth as we might have to suffer the brunt of it.

It should be noted that the worst solar storm we have seen in 2022 so far was a G3-class solar storm which was caused by a double CME impact in August. The solar storm caused GPS disruption and radio blackouts in large parts of Africa, Middle East and Australia. A stronger solar storm can easily damage satellites, disrupt mobile networks, damage broadband cables under the sea and impact internet connectivity, cause power grid failure and even corrupt the microprocessors in electronic devices.

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First Published Date: 02 Nov, 10:58 IST
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