Sunday Sunrise

Space.com, Strongest solar flare of 2025 erupts from sun, sparking radio blackouts across Europe, Asia and the Middle East

The sun roared to life early Tuesday (May 14), unleashing a powerful X-class solar flare from a newly emerging sunspot region AR4087. The eruption peaked at 4:25 a.m. EDT (0825 GMT), triggering strong R3-level radio blackouts across Europe, Asia and the Middle East — the sunlit side of Earth at the time — as sunspot region 2087 crackles with activity.

Solar flares of this magnitude are uncommon, according to the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). Solar flares are ranked by strength in five classes: A, B, C, M and X, with each step representing a tenfold increase in energy. The recent X flare clocked in at X2.7, placing it at the lower end of the most powerful solar flare class.

The eruption sent a blast of X-rays and extreme ultraviolet radiation hurling toward Earth at the speed of light, rapidly ionizing the upper atmosphere. This sudden change disrupted high-frequency radio signals, leading to communication dropouts for some radio operators across affected regions.

There may have been an associated coronal mass ejection (CME) — massive plumes of solar plasma and magnetic field accompanying the X-flare, though it is yet to be confirmed. CMEs can spark geomagnetic storms and vibrant auroras if they collide with Earth's magnetic field. But with AR4087 still near the sun's edge, our planet is out of the line of fire. For now. That may change soon as AR4087 is rotating toward Earth and has already fired off multiple solar flares.

It would be great to see some auroras again!

Linked at the Pirate's Cove in the weekly Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup and links. The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Country Girl in Carhartts up on time and under budget.

Did Civilization Just Dodge a Bullet?

Massive solar flare narrowly misses Earth, EMP disaster barely avoided

The earth barely missed taking a massive solar punch in the teeth two weeks ago, an "electromagnetic pulse" so big that it could have knocked out power, cars and iPhones throughout the United States.

Two EMP experts told Secrets that the EMP flashed through earth's typical orbit around the sun about two weeks before the planet got there.

"The world escaped an EMP catastrophe," said Henry Cooper, who led strategic arms negotiations with the Soviet Union under President Reagan, and who now heads High Frontier, a group pushing for missile defense.

"There had been a near miss about two weeks ago, a Carrington-class coronal mass ejection crossed the orbit of the Earth and basically just missed us," said Peter Vincent Pry, who served on the Congressional EMP Threat Commission from 2001-2008. He was referring to the 1859 EMP named after astronomer Richard Carrington that melted telegraph lines in Europe and North America.

"Basically this is a Russian roulette thing," added Pry. "We narrowly escape from a Carrington-class disaster."

I wonder about this.  Solar activity is pretty widely observed, and if a Carrington level event had occurred, even aimed elsewhere than earth, I'm sure suspect  it would have been more widely reported. A Carrington level event could seriously damage civilization as we know it, by disrupting our connections to YouTube and cable TV, as well as much of our power grid.  But the fact that this article is sourced to CIA and similar outfits looking for support for protection from EMP attack makes me suspicious that there may have been some exaggeration taking place.

Estimates are that "Carrington" level events happen approximately twice per millennium (they leave traces in ice cores), and events one fifth as big every century.  However, given Earth's relatively small size compared to the Sun, and the directionality of solar flares, we're likely to observe quite a few before actually being struck by one.

Since the sun rotates approximately 14 degrees a day, a 2 week miss was a big miss.