MOSCOW, January 4 The strongest flare of the current solar cycle occurred on the Sun; on Earth it should not cause any phenomena, scientists at the Solar Astronomy Laboratory of the Space Research Institute (IKI) reported ) RAS and the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
«The flare is the first truly powerful explosion of the current solar cycle and can, without exaggeration, be characterized as an event of exceptional power. The explosion is approximately 2 times more powerful than the previous record events of this cycle. According to the preliminary classification, the flare was assigned a score of X5.0. Previously ranked first The outbreak had a score of X2.8,” the report says.
It is noted that the flare occurred on New Year’s Eve, but in world catalogs, which are maintained in universal (London) time, will be marked 2023.
Scientists explained that the cause of the explosion was the accumulation of magnetic and electrical energy in the solar corona as a result of the movement of sunspots. It was impossible to predict the outbreak, because the area in which the explosion occurred was just yesterday on the far side of the Sun, and was invisible to earthly instruments. Laboratory staff did not rule out that before reaching the visible side of the Sun, this region had already produced several large explosions on its back side, which remained hidden from earthly instruments. In this case, the series of explosions may continue in the coming days.
It is emphasized that the impact of the flare on our planet is completely excluded, since it occurred on the eastern edge of the Sun at a considerable distance from the Sun-Earth line. Any reports of large or even record-breaking magnetic storms will be unreliable in this case, the laboratory said in a statement.
The previous cluster outbreak occurred less than 3 weeks ago, on December 14, 2023. The last time a larger event than today’s, namely an X8.2 flare, occurred on September 10, 2017, the laboratory recalled.
“It can be noted that both events, today’s and the previous one on December 14, so far occurred at a distance from the direction of Earth, which can be considered a certain kind of luck,” the scientists added.
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