As the Sun spits out more and bigger violent storm , video of flares emerging from its control surface help us see its power . Watching these , it usually looks like they peter out a few solar diameters forth , but the truth is very unlike . Although the particles that accompany smaller flares can lessen back as the herculean solar gravity overcome the speed with which they are moving , some flares can travel far beyond the Earth and even the stunned planets .
Solar flares are focalise bursts of radiation produce when zip trammel by twisted magnetic fields getsreleased suddenly . This accelerates commit particles from the Sun ’s plasma .
How far can solar flares travel?
As powerful as the Sun ’s gravitational force field is , flares can provide so much energy that particles within them can start with velocity a large fraction of the amphetamine of light . A combining of the Sun ’s gravity and meet with the thin textile in the not - quite vacuum of space slow these corpuscle down , but can not stop them . therefore , solar flare can journey all the way to theheliopause , the boundary where the solar air current buy the farm , finally miss the strength to drive aside the interstellar mass medium .
The heliopause , as we larn recently , isfar from global . So , to correct the 2d question first , solar solar flare can jaunt considerably different distance depending on which direction they are fired in . We have n’t full mapped the bound of the heliopause , but we have it away it ’s about 100 - 120 astronomic Units ( Earth - Sun aloofness ) at lower limit .
Some flare , which happen to be fired off in just the correct focussing , can probably reach distance of 350 AU or more . A powerful enough flare might even drive the bound out a little further for a while , like a rhinoceros running into a rubber rampart .
On the other hired hand , a few flares will melt into the magnetic field around the Earth or another major planet that has one , and be stopped a great passel earlier .
In fact , the most obvious part of a solar flare is the light it give out , and that will journey forever , unless it runs into something . We can seeflares from other stars , signal that in one sense the flare has cross many light twelvemonth to make us . The Sun ’s flares are not as big as those of many other stars , but that could still be escort from hundreds of light years aside with the correct telescope .
flash may fade in cleverness so that we ca n’t see them long before they reach such distances but that does n’t mean they are n’t still going .
How big can solar flares get?
If , when asking about a flare ’s size , you intend the question literally , then breed the length , as described above , by the area of the flair . This expanse varies of course , and can be hard to appraise , but flares can leap from sphere on the Sun ’s Earth’s surface many time larger than the Earth , and they do n’t get smaller as they travel .
References to flares being bighearted , however , are commonly about their power . The most powerful flare to be precisely measured was in 2001 . This was an X28.6 using thescale on which flare are measured , mean it carry 2.9 x 10 - 3Watts per square meter . That might not voice like much , but spread over an area far big than the Earth , it tot to an amazing amount of power .
However , two age later on another flare saturate the detectors on the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite . It has been estimate to have been an X40 or 45 .
But , we get it on flares can get much larger than this . TheCarrington Eventin the 19thCentury occurred well before we had the electrical capacity to measure flare ’ king . However , the force it spark , including electrocute telegraph operators , make open that this was on a much enceinte scale than anything we have seen in the outer space age .
radiation sickness bursts captured in tree rings may indicate flare orders of magnitude large still , although this interpretation is disputed .
Either way , it looks as though to find out how herculean flares can get , we can only wait and see .
