Head of the Space Weather Center at the Pushkov Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radio Wave Propagation of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IZMIRAN) Sergei Gaidash told TASS about the consequences of the last powerful solar flare.
“We estimate the power of the flash as close to the maximum - X9.3 (the letter means belonging to the class of extremely large flares, and the number is the power of the flash - approx." Lenta.ru "). It carries the threat of failure of space technology and communication systems. The outbreak has already resulted in a deterioration in the quality of communication in Europe and America,”the expert said.
Gaidash also predicted the start of a magnetic storm on the morning of September 7, which would lead to a deterioration in the well-being of people suffering from chronic diseases. “The extreme flare was preceded by a smaller outbreak that began on September 6 at about 4:00 pm Moscow time, and on September 4, there was a series of M-class flares, the previous in power in relation to X-class,” Gaidash said. According to him, "the ejection of solar matter accompanying the M-class flares on September 7 will cause a magnetic storm."
In this case, a flow of protons will be directed from the Sun to the Earth, which can cause a slight increase in the radiation background. Scientists, according to Gaidash, are monitoring the effects of the X9.3 outbreak to determine if it was accompanied by an ejection of solar matter towards the Earth. “Sometimes a powerful flash is not accompanied by an ejection and vice versa. If there was an ejection during an extremely large outbreak, it will reach the Earth on September 8-9,”the scientist said.
On the part of Russia, the IZMIRAN Space Weather Center is constantly monitoring the Sun: it tracks the appearance of spots on the sun, registers flares and monitors their consequences. This is necessary to warn structures responsible for the safety of spacecraft in orbit and other complex equipment about dangerous phenomena in space weather.
Earlier it was reported that the merger of the two largest sunspot groups resulted in the most powerful outbreak in the last 12 years, which belongs to class X. The phenomenon was assigned a score of 9.3, which makes the flare one of the five most powerful explosions on the Sun on record.
The most powerful flares observed on the Sun throw enormous energy into the surrounding space. In a few minutes, up to a trillion megatons of TNT goes into outer space. This is about a fifth of the energy emitted by the Sun in one second, and all the energy that a person will produce in a million years (assuming it is produced at the current rate).