www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,
A
fast-growing giant sunspot that can emit solar flares has more than
doubled in size in recent days and is currently facing Earth, according to experts.
Sunspots are dark areas of strong magnetic fields on the sun’s
surface. They appear dark because they are much colder than other parts
of the sun’s surface, having formed at areas where magnetic fields are
particularly strong, according to NASA.
Because
of the strong magnetic field, magnetic pressure increases while the
surrounding atmospheric pressure decreases, resulting in the lower
temperatures.
Sunspots are also associated with eruptive
disturbances such as solar flares, which are fast moving eruptions of
radiation, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which is when large masses
of plasma and highly magnetized particles violently eject from the sun.
Flares move at the speed of light and take about eight minutes to reach
earth, while CMEs can take three to four days to reach earth.
The fast-growing sunspot noted by experts is known as AR3038.
“Yesterday, sunspot AR3038 was big. Today, it’s enormous,” Tony Phillips, the author of SpaceWeather.com wrote on Wednesday.
“The fast-growing sunspot has doubled in size in only 24 hours,” Phillips added.
The
expert noted that the magnetic field surrounding AR3038 could
potentially blast M-class solar flares, or medium-sized flares, towards
Earth.
Photos from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory taken on June
22 show the sun with numerous sunspots, with AR3038 looking
particularly big after evolving over the past few days.
The
sunspot has doubled in size each day for the past three days and is
roughly 2.5 times the size of Earth, C. Alex Young, associate director
for science in the Heliophysics Science Division at NASA’s Goddard Space
Flight Center, said in an email to USA Today.
‘No Cause for Concern’
However,
Rob Steenburgh, the acting lead of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration’s Space Weather Forecast Office has said there is no
need to panic, noting that sunspots naturally grow in size.
“This
is what sunspots do,” he told USA Today. “Over time, generally, they’ll
grow. They go through stages, and then they decay.”
Young also noted that while the sunspot is producing flares, it “does not have the complexity for the largest flares” and there is only a 30 percent chance that it will create medium-sized flares. The chances it will create large flares are even smaller at 10 percent, the expert said.
W.
Dean Pesnell, the project scientist of the Solar Dynamics Observatory,
also offered reassurance that there is no need for concern, telling the
publication that AR3038 is a “modest-sized active region” that “has not
grown abnormally rapidly and is still somewhat small in area.”
As
of June 22, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space
Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), which monitors solar flares, has not
issued any warnings for them.
However, if solar flares such as an X1-class solar flare are released from the sun, they can potentially create disruptions to communication satellites and long-distance cables here on earth, wreaking havoc with the world’s internet.
Another
expert, Andrés Muñoz-Jaramillo, lead scientist at the SouthWest
Research Institute in San Antonio, also stressed that there is no need
for concern, explaining: “I want to emphasize there is no need to
panic,” and that the sunspots “happen all the time.”
“We
are prepared and doing everything we can to predict and mitigate their
effects. For the majority of us, we don’t need to lose sleep over it,” Muñoz-Jaramillo said.