Earlier, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration revealed that up to four sunspots have been detected on the Earth-facing side of the Sun, one of which is likely to have flare-ups. class C1 solar flare and propel it towards our planet. However, in the past 24 hours, the situation has gotten much worse. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has detected an unusual group of sunspots shaped like a ring. The sunspot group has increased more than 10 times in the last 24 hours and now creates great concern about upcoming solar storms in the coming days.
The development has report by SpaceWeather.com noted on its website, “A new sunspot is forming in the southern hemisphere of the sun. The unusual ring-shaped ‘spot’ has grown 10 times in size since yesterday, and it could soon become a threat to Earth-bound solar storms.”
Fear of solar storms when sunspots increase 10 times
There are two factors that govern whether a sunspot can explode and send solar storms towards us. Earth or not. The first is the size of the sunspot. The larger the sunspot, the higher the magnetic flux contained within it. This region conflicts with the rest of the Sun’s surface and its usual magnetic field lines. As the conflict increases, the pressure inside the sunspot increases and it explodes. However, not all large sunspots explode.
This gives we to the second factor is the concentration of magnetic flux inside the sunspot. Sunspots appear darker on Sun, the higher the chance of explosion. Darker sunspots also have significantly lower temperatures leading to frequent eruptions so thermal convection can continue.
Scary that this group of sunspots meets both of these criteria and that’s why there’s a chance that a severe solar storm could hit Earth. An extreme solar storm event (Grade G5) could cause massive damage to our planet. The resulting solar storm could be equivalent to the Carrington event of 1859, which was the largest recorded solar storm on Earth. A solar storm like that today can be quite frightening. It can break GPS, interfere with mobile and internet networks and even cause widespread blackouts by damaging the power grid. Even electronic devices on Earth are not safe from failure.
The Role of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) carries a full set of instruments for observing the Sun and has been doing so since 2010. It uses three very important instruments to collect data from the Sun. different activities of the Sun. These include the Magnetic and Heliocentric Imager (HMI) which performs high-resolution measurements of vertical and vector magnetic fields across the entire visible solar disk, the Ultraviolet Variation (EVE) experiment. The Sun’s ultraviolet irradiance measurement and the Atmospheric Imaging Consortium (AIA) provide continuous full-disc observations of the solar chromosphere and corona in seven ultraviolet (EUV) channels.
