| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Sun To Produce ‘Superflare’ With Power Of A Billion Megaton Bombs
Follow TIS on Twitter: @Truth_is_Scary & Like TIS of Facebook- facebook.com/TruthisScary
Astronomers have discovered that the Sun is capable of releasing a destructive ‘superflare’ – which is a thousand times greater than anything previously recorded.
Researchers at the University of Warwick say that the solar flares are similar in nature to the flares observes on a K-type eclipsing binary star (named KIC9655129).
Gizmodo.com reports:
Solar flares are a sudden flash of brightness on a sun’s surface, and they’re among the most powerful forces produced within a stellar system.
A typical solar flare, which happens on our Sun at irregular and frequent intervals, releases energy equal to about 100 million megaton bombs (or 1029 to 1032 ergs of energy over a timescale of a few hours). But a superflare, which astronomers frequently (and mercifully) observe outside our Solar System, is more powerful by an order of magnitude, releasing energies equivalent to a billion megaton bombs (or 1033 to 1036 ergs).
If our Sun were to suddenly churn out such a superflare, it would be…bad. Warwick astronomer Chloë Pugh, who led the new study, described it this way in a press release:
If the Sun were to produce a superflare it would be disastrous for life on Earth; our GPS and radio communication systems could be severely disrupted and there could be large scale power blackouts as a result of strong electrical currents being induced in power grids.
It’s obviously important that we learn more about this extreme form of superflare–and whether or not our Sun is actually capable of such stellar feats.
Source: http://truthisscary.com/2015/12/sun-to-produce-superflare-with-power-of-a-billion-megaton-bombs/
