In Italy we didn’t notice it, but the inhabitants of England and Tasmania, for example, yes. What consequences has had the solar flare of this week.
On October 9, the activity of the Sun has experienced a particular event, which has directly affected the Earth, affected, however, three days later, namely October 12. It was a solar flare carefully monitored by NASA: the American space agency spoke of a glow of class M1.6 and a coronal mass ejection, commonly indicated by the acronym CME.
What consequences did the solar flare have: the aurora borealis and aurora australis
It was a big and relevant event, but it did not have the dramatic consequences of the most powerful solar flares ever recorded: compared to the highest peak of solar activity ever recorded by scientists’ instruments, last Saturday’s flare was a hundred times less powerful. A comparison with the so-called “Carrington event” would have helped to further reduce its magnitude, but what has been called “the strongest geomagnetic storm in history” still dates back to 1859 and has not been recorded with the accuracy of modern devices.
At the end of the day, the only appreciable consequence of the last solar storm was the spectacle of the aurora borealis and aurora australis. The electrical particles released by the Sun were in fact pushed by the Earth’s magnetic field toward the South and North Poles. And so the aurora at night was seen in the north of England, in Iowa and Nebraska (United States) and, south of the Equator, in Tasmania and in some places in New Zealand.
The inhabitants of the places invested by the show did not miss the opportunity to take pictures to share on social networks. For scientists, the event provided an additional opportunity for study and insight. In particular, NASA’s Office of Space Weather Operations from Moon to Mars estimated that CME particles were traveling at about 983 kilometers per second at the time of release.
The risks of a solar flare and the importance of research
This time, in short, it went well, but researchers have repeatedly taken the opportunity of a solar storm to emphasize that “we don’t know much about the Sun’s interior,” despite the fact that it is “extremely important to know more if we want to understand the solar climate, which can have a direct impact on Earth.” Some research, for example, has speculated on the risk of internet collapse. The Sun is the ultimate threat to the Earth: in fact one day it will die, swallowing our planet and everything it contains.
Giuseppe Giordano