Powerful X-Class Solar Flare Impact and Disruptions
TapTechNews July 15th news, just when people began to think that the sun seems to have quieted down a lot recently, it silenced people with an explosive X-class flare, X-class flare is the most intense type of solar flare.
The flare originated from the sunspot area numbered AR3738 and occurred at 10:34 PM Eastern Time on July 13 (TapTechNews note: 10:34 AM on July 14 Beijing time), and NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this spectacular sight.
However, to the disappointment of aurora enthusiasts, this brief flare did not produce a coronal mass ejection (CME) - a violent eruption of solar plasma and magnetic fields. Solar physicist Keith Strong has been closely watching for signs of CME in recent eruptions, but he recently said in a post on X that this high-intensity solar activity is unlikely to trigger any geomagnetic activities.
Shortly after the flare erupted, there were indeed shortwave radio disruptions in Australia, Southeast Asia and Japan. Since such events release intense X-rays and extreme ultraviolet radiation, shortwave radio disruptions often accompany solar flare eruptions.
Radiation from solar flares reaches the Earth at the speed of light and will ionize the upper atmosphere of the Earth (charged) when it arrives. The ionization will create a denser environment for high-frequency shortwave radio signals used for long-distance communication. When radio waves interact with electrons in the ionosphere, due to increased collisions, energy will be lost, eventually resulting in the attenuation or even complete disappearance of the radio signal.
According to TapTechNews, a solar flare is a powerful electromagnetic radiation burst released from the surface of the sun, which occurs when the accumulated magnetic energy in the solar atmosphere is released. The intensity of the flare is divided into different levels, among which the X-level is the strongest. The intensity of the M-level flare is one-tenth of that of the X-level, and it is successively reduced to the C-level, B-level and A-level. Each level is also represented by a number from 1 to 10 (the X-level may exceed 10) for the relative intensity of the flare. According to the report of SpaceWeatherLive, the intensity of the flare on July 14 is X1.27.