{"id":244139,"date":"2025-05-16T22:34:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T22:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/aerospace\/sun-launches-its-strongest-solar-flare-of-the-year-so-far-causing-radio-blackouts-around-the-world\/"},"modified":"2025-05-16T22:34:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T22:34:10","slug":"sun-launches-its-strongest-solar-flare-of-the-year-so-far-causing-radio-blackouts-around-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=244139","title":{"rendered":"Sun Launches Its Strongest Solar Flare of the Year So Far, Causing Radio Blackouts Around the World"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The new sunspot responsible for this powerful blast is rotating into view, which could bring more solar activity\u2014and potential aurora-causing coronal mass ejections\u2014to Earth in the coming days<\/h2>\n
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Margherita Bassi<\/a><\/p>\n

– Daily Correspondent<\/span><\/p>\n

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The sun launched a powerful solar flare on May 14, 2025, captured here by\u00a0NASA\u2019s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
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The sun has had quite a busy week hurling solar flares at our planet, causing blackouts across the globe.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter weeks of calm, solar activity is suddenly high again,\u201d reports Spaceweather.com<\/em><\/a>. This is not totally unexpected, as scientists announced<\/a> in the fall that the sun has reached the peak of its natural, 11-year cycle of activity, a high level known as the solar maximum. During this phase, the sun has more sunspots<\/a>\u2014dark, cool regions with tangled-up magnetic fields that can erupt material out into space.<\/p>\n

The recent flares came from a pair of sunspots, including a new one that emerged earlier this week. Called AR4087, the spot is not completely aligned with Earth, but it\u2019s currently turning toward our planet. \u201cIf the explosions continue for a few more days, however, Earth will find itself squarely in the strike zone,\u201d with the potential for aurora-causing coronal mass ejections (CMEs) to arrive, writes Spaceweather.com<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Solar flares<\/a> are bursts on the sun\u2019s surface that send electromagnetic radiation<\/a>, including X-rays and extreme ultraviolet radiation (EUV), hurtling through space\u2014and sometimes, they\u2019re pointed at Earth. These forms of energy can ionize, or charge, low layers of the planet\u2019s ionosphere on the sun-facing side. That can affect high frequency radio waves<\/a> used for long-distance communication, because they bounce off the ionosphere\u2019s upper layers to get around the globe. When the lower layers are ionized, however, these waves lose energy or become completely absorbed, causing radio blackouts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A solar flare\u2019s intensity<\/a> is classified as either A, B, C, M or X, with X being the most powerful and each letter representing an increase in strength by a factor of ten. Radio blackout intensities are ranked on a scale from R1 to R5, with R1 corresponding to an M1 flare and R5 corresponding to X20, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration<\/a> (NOAA).<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, a sunspot named AR4086 shot out<\/a> an X1.2 solar flare. The very next day, the new sunspot AR4087 followed up with an M5.3 flare before a significantly stronger X2.7 flare<\/a>\u2014then topped it all off with another M7.7 flare<\/a>, as reported by Live Science<\/em><\/a>\u2019s Jess Thomson. The AR4087 explosion caused \u201cstrong\u201d R3 radio blackouts in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, per Space.com<\/em><\/a>\u2019s Daisy Dobrijevic.<\/p>\n