Solar Flares Astronomy Cast 11/19/2013 321 #2

The sun has an 11 year cycle. In this cycle there are times when the sun is "unruly". These unruly emotion, is caused from the sunspots on the sun. These sunspots are amazing to watch. A solar flare is caused because, when the sun makes its magnetic poles inside out, and reaches this phase called a solar maximum. In this phase, field lines are created and these create helix lines that are solar flares. This is caused when the magnetic field line attaches and reattaches.
An example of this is when you have a spoonful on spaghetti and then pull it, u will never get a single strand but a whole clump.
These solar flares have an energy equivalent of millions of hydrogen bombs exploding at once. This is only ten percent of the suns energy. The charge of the suns flare creates a magnetic field that we can feel. This process takes only a few seconds, however because of the speed of light it takes it eight minutes to hit us.
Satellites in space detect particles from the Sun, this is vital, because if these particles hit the astronauts, they will have radiation poisoning of some kind. These satellites can detect these particles fifteen minutes apart.
They talked about how the first people on the moon were lucky that the sun's flares weren't constantly erupting. These flares have different levels of power. These are measured in satellites and in Pico-meters. These are measured from A being the weakest and so on. However the Earth can only take so much; our atmosphere would change over time. The biggest flare was the (Karangtin?) flare. This flare looked like a sea serpent or slugs put together. Then it flashed out in white light, this was important because most flares are not in visible light.
Solar flares are a factor in Auroras. A year ago a Solar flare took out the power grid. This was referred to as the Quebec blackout. Solar flares can take out the power for about two hours. This can be deadly in cold places.