Kind: captions
Language: en
from our home on Earth roughly 93
million miles away the Sun appears to
Glow gently sending a steady stream of
heat and light our way but how much and
exactly what kind of energy and matter
the sun releases changes all the time
depending on what's going on beneath its
surface this means the environment of
our solar system is constantly changing
creating space weather around our planet
like weather on Earth Solar conditions
are moderate most of the time even
though the sun belches out a million
tons of energetic particles every second
this solar wind is so spread out it's
like a warm steady Breeze but sometimes
space weather can take a sudden turn for
the worst violent storms erupt with the
potential to cause serious damage
there are two main kinds of storms solar
flares and coronal mass ejections or
CMEs for short flares and CMEs are
closely related and start the same way
with fluctuations in the sun's magnetic
fields these magnetic lines themselves
are invisible but we can see them light
up as they channel Bright hot flows of
solar
plasma the most common storms solar
flares tend to be quick powerful and
localized like intense
thunderstorms they shoot high energy
particles as well as X-rays and gamma
rays away from the Sun at incredible
speeds a single flare can release the
energy equivalent of 10 million volcanic
eruptions or more than a billion
hydrogen
bombs CMEs are bigger slower and more
spread out more like a hurricane these
huge eruptions of plasma from the corona
start out narrow but they soon expand to
about 30 million M across and can travel
at speeds of up to 4 million
mph like Gathering clouds sunspots offer
a clue that storms might be brewing a
sunspot is a massive region several
times the size of the Earth which
appears on the Sun as a dark spot it's
dark because it's relatively cool
compared to its surroundings and it's
cool because the magnetic fields are so
strong that they're suppressing the flow
of heat from Below the sun sends storms
out in every direction and Earth is
small and far away so we're largely
oblivious to all this solar activity but
a small percentage of solar storms do
hit Earth and when they do they can
cause serious damage