The Earh Could Be Hit By Super Solar Flare

On March 24th 2016, a new study published in the journal, Nature Communications, revealed evidence that suggests that the Earth could one day be hit by what is known as a super solar flare. A solar flare happens when magnetic energy that has built up within the sun's atmosphere is suddenly released. This occurrence sends highly charged particles hurtling toward the Earth where most of it is deflected by the electromagnetic field.

Here on Earth we witness these particles as the auroras that happen at the north and south poles. According to professor Christopher Karoff, of Aarhus University in Denmark, who led the team who researched the phenomenon, super solar flares are much more explosive events that are one to six orders-of-magnitude larger than the largest flare observed on the sun, through the space age.

Prof Karoff and his team used the Guo Shou Jing telescope in China to observe nearly 100,000 stars. What he and his team found, was that about one in ten of those stars were producing super solar flares, and that those stars had a magnetic field similar to, or weaker than our sun. Prof Karoff said that he and his team did not expect this finding. It leaves open the possibility that our sun could one day produce a super flare.

If the Earth were hit by a super flare eruption today, it would not only damage electronic equipment, but it would damage our atmosphere and the planet's ability to support life. However, there is evidence that the Earth has been hit by a super flare in the past. Tree rings from a geological archive, from 775 AD have shown an anomalously large amount of carbon 14 which is a radioactive isotope. Carbon 14 is formed when either cosmic rays or highly energetic protons from the sun enter the Earth's atmosphere.

On the bright side, if the Earth were hit by a super flare, it wouldn't necessarily be as bad as the ending of the 2009 movie, "Knowing."  And, we would at least have some warning time. A Coronal Mass Ejection or CME, would take anywhere from 18 hours to five days to reach us.