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The Sun Could Blast Earth With a Solar ‘Superflare’ 1,000 Times Larger Than Mankind Has Ever Seen
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David Gutierrez | Natural News
Recent studies of other stars have revealed that our sun is capable of blasting the Earth with a solar flare that is far more powerful than anything that has been seen since humans started tracking “solar weather” in the 1970s, warned Kyoto University astrophysicist Kazunari Shibata at the recent Space Weather Workshop in Boulder, Colorado. The workshop was sponsored by NASA, the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Such a “superflare” could have catastrophic consequences, knocking out modern power grids and satellites along with all of the basic services that depend upon them.
The largest known solar flare in modern times was the Carrington Event, which occurred in 1859 and caused the aurora borealis to be seen as far south into the tropics as Cuba, El Salvador and Hawaii. According to a 2008 study by the National Academy of Sciences, a similar flare occurring today would have an economic impact greater than $2 trillion.
SUPERFLARES MORE COMMON THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT
Solar flares occur when the magnetic energy concentrated in sunspots erupts out from the sun’s surface. These flares, which occur daily, can vary dramatically in magnitude (that is, how much energy they contain). The NOAA Space Weather Scale ranks flares based on their peak X-ray output, from a low of R1 to an extreme of R5. R5 flares occur roughly once per solar cycle, or about once every 11 years. Thus far, no solar flares during the current cycle have exceeded R3 (“strong”).
According to research conducted by Hiroyuki Maehara and colleagues and published in the journal Nature in 2012, the sun should produce a solar flare 1,000 times larger than an R5 rating about once every 800 to 5,000 years. This conclusion was based on an analysis of stars observed by the unmanned Kepler spacecraft launched in 2009. The researchers found that over the course of 120 days, Kepler observed evidence of 365 superflares taking place across more than 80,000 stars similar to our sun.
Source: http://truthisscary.com/2015/05/the-sun-could-blast-earth-with-a-solar-superflare-1000-times-larger-than-mankind-has-ever-seen/
