There was a strong solar flare on March 28, 2023. This event caused some limited and temporary radio interference and occasional power outages in the sunny part of our planet. Asia and Oceania were located in the affected area at the time of the incident.
These explosions were in the X class, which is the strongest explosion class according to the logarithmic classification, which divides the explosions into classes A, B, C, M or X. X is ten times as big as M and M is ten times as big as C, but any C explosions or lower class explosions won’t affect Earth. The most recent explosion was an X1.2 explosion. While this eruption is quite large, it’s not one of the most powerful we’ve seen in this solar cycle, especially in the last few months.
If you think you’ve seen a lot of news about explosions, coronal mass ejections and holes in the Sun lately, it’s because the Sun is very active right now. The explosion increase is expected as the Sun moves towards the maximum of its activity in the 25th solar cycle we are in, which has been observed since the beginning of the records. But even assuming that the Sun has fully “awakened”, the last few months have been much more active than models predicted.
There’s still a lot we don’t know about the Sun’s variability and potential longer duration cycles that could increase or decrease how active our star is. Although this eruption may have affected our planet, solar flares could become much more powerful. The strongest explosion determined using modern methods was recorded in 2003, and we know of at least one X28 class. This explosion was so powerful that it overloaded the sensors measuring it.
The new eruption was imaged and reported by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which constantly monitors the Sun.
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