A series of rapid-fire solar flares is providing the first chance to test a new theory of why the sun releases its biggest outbursts when its activity is ramping down. Migrating bands of magnetism that meet at the sun’s equator may cause the biggest flares, even as the sun is going to sleep.
A single complex sunspot called Active Region 2673 emitted seven bright flares — powerful bursts of radiation triggered by magnetic activity — from September 4 to September 10. Four were X-class solar flares, the most intense kind. The strongest, released at 8:02 a.m. EDT on September 6, was an X9.3. The most powerful flare since 2006 (and the eighth largest since monitoring started in June 1996), it disrupted shortwave radio communication over Africa for up to an hour. It also flung a blob of energetic plasma, called a coronal mass ejection, speeding toward Earth, which sparked auroras the night of September 7 that were visible as far south as Arkansas.
All that activity is counterintuitive, as the sun is near the end of an unusually weak solar cycle, which began in 2008 (SN: 11/2/13, p. 22). The sun’s magnetic activity waxes and wanes roughly every 11 years, generating more dark sunspots at the peak of the cycle and fewer at the trough.
By Lisa Grossman – Full Story at Science News