The Recent Solar Flare C3 That Escaped our Planet Earth

On 8th September 2010, the Sun unleashed a massive solar flare aimed over an array close to our planet. Luckily, we had escaped such a seemingly dreadful devastation as it would have caused maybe a lot more than just the expected bright auroras of hot light.

The Sun unleashed a powerful Solar flare from the sunspot location of 1105 but luckily it was aimed away form Earth and so our planet was untouched. However with the passage of time, what we may need to really worry about is the fact that the sun has entered an active 11 year period where it could start off shooting solar flares that could hit the earth. Such solar storms would have catastrophic consequences and can result in knocking out satellites which could further cause the mobile phones, cables, internet connectivity and obviously lead the electric power grids to shut down taking us back to medieval times.

Solar flares are categorized according to their intensity into A, B C of 100 to 800 picometer but the real thing is that the C class flares are powerful but can only create bright auroras on earth. The Sunspots are actually dark structure on the sun which are caused due to intense magnetic activity and erupt causing energetic storms and flare ups. Not many are aware of the proven fact that the fossil records confirm that Earth suffers mass extinction at a 27 million years interval. For this reason, NASA has planned a solar probe to be launched in 2018 so that the sun could be studied at from a close distance.

Due to the decreased rate of solar flares and radiations the atmosphere is shrinking and also lowering the levels of the solar radiation, the actual culprits that are blamed for the shrinking atmosphere. This sure can cause problems in the orbits and other rotating objects around the earth.

Scientists at the National Centre of Atmospheric Research discovered the need to study the importance of solar influences on our terrestrial environment both with scientific implications and social consequences. Satellites that orbit the Earth make the job a little less complex as the Thermosphere is more dense and shrunken, the unwanted debris will also rotate around the earth freely. The sun’s radiation penetrates into the first gaseous layer of the earth’s atmosphere that is the Thermosphere and when there is less solar activity this layer gets less dense plus the solar flares are also less active. Plus this is also the main reason that the density of the Atmospheric layer has decreed.

The author is an associate at IslamTribune.com a US based Online News Magazine, capturing different perspectives of people and their view on News around the world. For more detailed insights on US and the Middle East News visit the website.