Sun Erupts Again. What is it Trying to Tell Us? What Should We Know?

The Sun unleashed a significant X-class solar flare last week with a strong coronal mass ejection (CME).

When we consider energy, we should remember that there is no single larger and more important energy source for the earth and all humanity than the Sun. We seem to take it for granted.  So as these solar coronal mass eruptions happen and bathe our planet with radiation, perhaps we should take notice and consider the implications. 

The Sun continues to be angry and active, spitting our flares, exploding coronal mass ejections, eruptions and flares.  The Solar flares have fired more radiation earth’s way in the past 12 months than in any 12 months of the past decade. The ancients from the Egyptians, Zoroastrians, Greeks, and alchemists, astrologers put social and religious meanings to these “outbursts” of our sun.  Indians in North and South America studied the sun carefully.  Like the ancients, even today the FARMERS ALMANAC has astrological and sun readings to help people plan agricultural activity.

We tend to ignore the eruptions of the sun, until like 2 days ago, when short wave and other electronic signals were totally disrupted.  In our business, we have various instruments to measure different forms of radiation, and rays of various kinds.  We travelled to our place high in the Sangre De Christos Mountains, of New Mexico and yes, even our simple instruments could read elevated levels of various forms of radiation.

We are essentially told by our leaders to ignore this, but we at BootheGlobalPerspectives find this activity interesting and perhaps significant.  

Our scientists make much of global warming, but we see little impact analysis of our sun, the most important single star impacting our existence.  There were reports of  digital and film photos being zapped and erased because of these intense rays But we have not been able to verify this. 

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured the solar activity that occurred on March 29 and took some fantastic photos including one that shows a flare of radiation and bright light beaming toward the earth.  The ancients would have applied meaning to this. We are not even told to cover our heads or avoid excessive sun exposure. The solar flare peaked at 1.48 p.m. Based on the images captured, the massive flare erupted from the sunspot Active Region (AR) 2017 at 10 degree North and 48 degrees West. 

Last month, the Sun emitted a mid-level solar flare on March 12 from the surface AR 11996. The flare peaked at 6.34 p.m. EDT and this activity was also captured by SDO.

After five hours after the solar activity, a dark region spread across the North Pole of the sun. This is referred to as the coronal dimming event, a reduction in the brightness of the surface of the Sun. Consider this, the eruption and explosion was so large, that it caused temporary dimming of the sun. 

Following this event, the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center issued a G1 (Minor) geomagnetic storm watch for April 2 as a series of coronal mass ejections are expected to occur that are linked with the March 29 massive solar flare from AR 2017h.

It was also reported on SpaceWeather.com that the massive flare triggered a brief radio blackout event on March 29 and produced signals on its own.

"The explosion above sunspot AR2017 sent shock waves racing through the sun's atmosphere at speeds as high as 4800 km/s (11 million mph). Radio emissions stimulated by those shocks crossed the 93 million mile divide to Earth, causing shortwave radio receivers to roar with static," explained Stan Nelson, Radio Engineer, Roswell NM. 

Solar Flares are bursts of powerful radiation that sling hazardous materials from space toward Earth. But we are told that none of these pass through the Earth's atmosphere to cause serious damage, but on the other hand, they do knock down radio signals. 

They are classified based on their intensity similar to the hurricanes. The strongest solar flares are classified as X-class flares and the weakest is the A-class flares followed by B, C and M. The most noteworthy solar flares are M and X class solar flares. To classify the various strengths of the flares, they are designated numbers such as 1, 2, 3, higher the number more powerful is the strength.

In the mountains of New Mexico, we wonder if those people who seem to feel headaches or poorly when there are major eruptions have relevent sensitivities.  We wonder if the old mystics could sense or see these things.  When we consider that these eruptions are so vast and powerful that they could dwarf entire nations in size, and emit more energy than our entire globe from day to day, we again realize how small we are in relative terms.