Sun unleashes another powerful flare

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Sun unleashes another powerful flare

April 16, 2001

Web posted at: 3:43 PM EDT (1943 GMT)

(CNN) -- The sun, exhibiting its most turbulent behavior in years, unleashed on Sunday the fifth most powerful solar flare ever recorded. The flare, considered an X-14 X-ray class eruption, was nearly as strong as a blast in 1989 that triggered the collapse of a major power grid in Canada.

The most recent salvo should do little to threaten electrical or communications systems on Earth or in Earth orbit since it was directed away from our planet, space weather forecasters said.

A flare with an X-20 or higher intensity left the sun on March 2. It was one of the two most powerful blasts recorded since satellites began measuring solar activity in 1979.

The sun, at the peak of an 11-year cycle of solar activity, has in recent months unleashed many powerful solar flares. They are sometimes associated with coronal mass ejections, streams of billions of tons of gas and radiation that, when directed toward Earth, can disrupt satellites and radio communications and produce dazzling auroras.

-- (sp@ce.news), April 17, 2001

Answers

Remember what Ed Dames said. Was this one his "shot across the bow"?

-- If It Is (then@we're.toast), April 17, 2001.

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