A few days ago, a large sunspot appeared on the Sun, which was named AR3038. Since it was spotted, the already giant spot has doubled in size in just 24 hours and is heading straight for Earth. It is not a strong eruption, but it is still interesting to see how the spot moves and what its occurrence means.
Sunspots are dark spots on the surface of the Sun. In these places, strong magnetic fields, created by the flow of electrical charges from the solar plasma, become knotted and then burst. This will cause a solar eruption, which is a release of energy or a so-called burst of radiation. A solar eruption generates explosive streams of solar material called coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are further classified according to their strength. Solar flares travel at the speed of light and therefore take only 8 minutes to reach us from an average distance of about 150 million kilometers.
Watch a new video on sunspot AR3038 here:
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Source: Youtube
What is AR3038 stain?
The sunspot, called AR3038, grew to 2.5 times the size of Earth between Sunday, June 19 and Monday night, June 20, according to Spaceweather.com. At this moment, its diameter was approximately 31,900 kilometers. After that, the Earth’s spot remained and will remain in the sunspot’s viewfinder for several more days. Did it affect the Earth in any way?
Although it might seem that because the stain is growing so quickly, it could somehow affect us, it is not. A giant sunspot is less scary than it might seem, as the eruptions it produces belong to the M class. The M class then includes eruptions that usually cause short radio blackouts that affect the Earth’s polar regions, and smaller radiation storms.
If a sunspot forms near the Sun’s equator, like AR3038, it takes about two weeks to travel across the Sun so that it is no longer facing Earth. So this means that the spot is now well into the second half of its journey, but still in Earth’s crosshairs.
Also watch this video:
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Source: Youtube
Class M eruptions are fairly common
As the website said, AR3038 has an unstable ‘beta-gamma’ magnetic field, which harbors the energy for M-class (intermediate-sized) solar flares, and is directly facing Earth. M-class flares are the most common type of solar flare.
What usually happens is that when a moderate or strong solar flare hits the Earth’s upper atmosphere, the X-ray and ultraviolet radiation from the flare ionizes the atoms. As a result, the reflection of high-frequency radio waves is prevented and a so-called radio blackout occurs.
These radio blackouts are then visible over those areas of the Earth that are illuminated by the Sun during the eruption. And outages also have their own classification, from R1 to R5 in order of increasing severity.
Last week, new swarms of spots appeared near the Sun. They are giants, they can threaten the Earth
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The power of solar storms
In April and May of this year, two solar flares caused R3 outages over the Atlantic Ocean, Australia and Asia. So far, the largest solar storm we have ever recorded in modern history was the so-called Carrington Event of 1859. This eruption released about as much energy as the explosion of 10 billion one-megaton atomic bombs. Telegraph systems around the world were fried, and the aurora borealis was brighter than the light of a full moon. It was visible from the Caribbean. If a similar event were to occur today, it would cause trillions in damage and cause widespread power outages. However, this is not the case with the AR3038.
Scientists predict that solar activity will increase steadily over the next few years, reaching an overall maximum in 2025 before declining again.
Resources:
www.universetoday.com, www.livescience.com, www.newsweek.com
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