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Last Post 10/23/2013 3:27 PM by Paulett Liewer

solar storms

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10/23/2013 6:11 AM
Clarie S What's a so-called super-flare? Do they exist, and if so, could it have a major effect on earth?

Tags: super-flare

Paulett Liewer

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Posts:113

10/23/2013 3:27 PM
Hi Clare, A Super-flare is a flare that releases much, much more energy than a typical flare from our Sun..maybe 100 to millions of times more energy. We've never observed a super flare from our Sun and there is no records of one in any of the geological evidence on Earth. That's good, becuase such a flare would have disasterous results on Earth. You probably know that flares from our Sun and the coronal mass ejections which often accompany the large ones can wreak havoc on communications system and damage spacecraft and other things... Super-flares have only been observed on other stars. NASA's Kepler mission saw a lot of superflares - 365 at last count... This is an area of active research. We don't really know why other stars can have such big flares. Paulett