Solar Tsunami Alert
As Giant Sunspot Looms
BreakForNews.com, 15th Jan, 2005 12:00ET
by Fintan Dunne, Editor EXCLUSIVE
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link to www.breakfornews.com]
Fast-developing sunspot could match historic flares of Nov. ī03
The sunspot grew quickly over the last four days -Image Spaceweather.com
Three days ago the sunspot numbered 10720 barely rated a mention.
But as it rotated into an earth-facing position, the boiling solar
cauldron quickly mushroomed in size to over seven times the diameter
of our own planet. Now experienced observers say it has explosive
potential for massive solar eruptions aimed at Earth.
Itīs been a busy 24 hours on the sun. A total of 28 C-class events
were recorded yesterday --the most C flares in a single day during the
current solar cycle 23.
"Extremely energetic flares, above the X10 class level, are possible,
coments solar watcher Jan Alvestrad. "This region has the potential to
generate flares similar to those observed in October/November 2003."
Such an X-class 10 flare would certainly rank along with the historic
flares of late 2003, when a series of nine massive X-class solar
eruptions in only 12 days all largely missed Earth. Nevertheless two
Japanese satellite failures and a power outage in Sweden were blamed
on the solar storms.
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