In our daily lives, the sun seems constant and quiet, shining at a constant pace. But the appearance can be misleading: our star can also exploit powerful solar storms, huge explosions of energy and subatomic participants. If these are directed towards us, they can trigger auroras and interrupt our power grilles, as well as the ravages with the satellites with the orbit of the earth.
These storms are magnetic nature. A fundamental rule in physics is that the loaded parts create magnetic fields around them as they move. And the sun is full of loaded particles because it is such a hot interior that the atoms there are scratched or one or more electricity, forming what we call plasma. Superhot’s plasma closer to the nucleus rises, while the coldest plasma near the sinkings of the surface, creating imposing columns of convection material by the millions, each with their own magnetic field. These fields can be entangled near the surface, sometimes breaking, like a spring under too much tension, to release amounts of energy in an intense explosion in a small place in the sun. This sudden flash of light accompanied by a colossal explosion of subatomic parts is called Sunbrope.
The most powerful flare we have measured directly occurred in 2003, and issued around 7 × 1025 Energy joules in the period of a few hours. That is approximately the amount of energy that the whole sun emits in a fifth of a second, which may not sound very impression: Runil, remember that it comes from a small isolated region on the surface of the sun!
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We also know that, historical, our star has left much bigger flares. The high-speed subatomic parts that rain of the solar storms shudder in nitrogen in our atmosphere to create an isotope called beryllium 10, or BE-10, which can be captured on polar ice after falling to the surface of the earth. When examining old ice cores, scientists can obtain precise dates for peaks in BE-10 (and other related isotopes), which can be used to trace historical solar activity.
Such isotopic peaks have revealed what can be the most powerful solar eruption in relatively recent history, an event that occurred in 7176 scientists a. C. They argued at the beginning about the cause of the thesis peaks; The activity of the sun did not seem powerful enough to create the amounts of isotopes seen. The bursts of supernovae or gamma rays could explain the peaks, too much but only when it happened quite close to our planet, and that should have left other forms of evidence that, until now, scientists have not found. Consistently, the current consensus is that the sun is really responsible for these huge increases in isotopes. Scientists now call these “Miyake” Picos, in honor of the Japanese physicist of Cosmic Rays Fusa Miyake, a leader to discover them and understand them.
An expulsion of coronal mass, or CME, which extends to the space of the Sun on August 31, 2012. This compound image also includes a representation of the Earth to show the size of the CME compared to our planet.
While these flares were huge, there are reasons to suspect that the sun is able to unleash the equally bigger. Some stars submit to what they are called SuperflaresThey are ridiculous Powerful, reaching a total energy of 1029 Joules, or the equivalent of what the sun emits over 20 minutes. In more human terms, that is approximately 300 million years in the current annual use of energy of our global civilization, all in an explosion of a letter or star activity.
Superflares are relatively rare. Observing them in any given star would take a blow of luck, unless he stacked the probabilities in his favor.
That is just what an international astronomer team did. The Kepler spacecraft supervised approximately half a million stars in a period of a decade, looking for revealing planets signs accompanied. But all those data can also be used for other things. Astronomers sought superflares that arise from more than 56,000 sun stars in Kepler’s observations, which joined a remarkable 220,000 years in total observed of star activity. The researchers published the results in Science At the end of 2024.
When examining that set of fixed data, the team found 2,889 probably superflares in 2,527 sun star. That works with approximately a superfluence by star of the sun per century, which seems quite terrifying because it would be presumably to mean that the sun sends an explosive superflaria every year or SOO.
But let’s not be so hurried. On the one hand, the rotation of a star can influence powerful in the development of the magnetic fields that put in Bengal, and the rotation period was unknown to 40,000 of the stars examined from the study, so this part of the act is possible. And 30 percent of the superflaro producing stars were in binary systems with a star partner, which could also affect the results. The list of potential confusion variables does not stop here: there are several other factors that could make a star apparently only more prone to produce superfloros than the sun.
On the other hand, as I mentioned, Be-10 and other revealing isotopes can occur in other ways that do not introduce star flares. And, in the case, it is not entirely clear how well the superflares would specifically make such particles. Then, Althegh, we have counted five be-10 peaks attributed by the sun in the last 10,000 years, that does not mean that the sun has only Produced so many strong flares at that time. Perhaps there were Thers who left more subtle and in identified records in the ice or that is directed to the Earth and, therefore, did not produce a terrestrial isotopic signal at all.
If the sun Did I took a superflare today, what would be the effects? Life impacts on Earth would probably be quite minimal; The magnetic field of our planet acts as a shield against the incoming subatomic parts, and our atmosphere would absorb most of the associated high -energy electromagnetic radiation (such as gamma and X -rays).
Our technological civilization is another matter, thought. A great flap could fry electronics in all, except in the most protected satellites and interrupt energy grilles to cause generalized and durable blackouts. The engineers have devised safeguards to avoid harmful electric waves of the majority of extreme space climate, but if a sprinkle is powerful enough, there may not be much that we could avoid serious damage.
Should we worry? The conclusion of the study is that it is possible The sun produces superflares more frequently than we think previously, but this conclusion is not conclusive. So consider this research a good start, and a good argument to obtain more and better information. Don’t be scared yet!
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