40 votes
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Is the dark side of the earth protected from the risks of solar flares?

Nope Solar flares don't work like "A massive blob of hot gas hitting the bright side of the Earth" It's more similar to "A stream of ionized plasma that 'hits' the Earth's magnetic ...
Furious Arcturus's user avatar
9 votes
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Is the mechanism of solar flares on red dwarfs and brown dwarfs the same as that on the Sun?

Yes, the basic mechanism is thought to be the same on red dwarfs and at least the hotter brown dwarfs, but the details can be different. As you say, magnetic reconnection in the corona is the ...
ProfRob's user avatar
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8 votes
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How does a Super-Massive Black Hole 'flare'?

The flare happens just outside the black hole. Matter which aproaches a black hole but not perfectly straight on doesn't fall into it immediately. It gets pulled around the black hole, just as a ...
Steve Linton's user avatar
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7 votes
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What forces expelled these huge clouds, then blocked further progress, yet allowed it to maintain its threads?

This was a coronal mass ejection. Those 1973 astronomers weren't looking at the picture correctly. They didn't have the tools at that time to look at the picture correctly. Coronal mass ejections (...
David Hammen's user avatar
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7 votes

Where do Coronal Mass Ejections go?

Coronal Mass ejections are not easy to detect from Earth (until they hit the ionosphere and cause a geomagnetic storm) The first was discovered by a space-based solar observatory in 1971. They are, ...
James K's user avatar
  • 115k
6 votes
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Does coronal mass ejection include radiation at optical wavelengths?

Coronal mass ejections consist of a very hot, but thin, plasma. Their very weak intrinsic emission would be dominated by ultraviolet and X-ray lines and bremsstrahlung continuum. There is very little ...
ProfRob's user avatar
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6 votes
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Difference in creation of solar flares and CME?

The point of my comment was that the connection between CMEs and flares would make for a good 20 page research paper in a college course. The connections are still only understood at a kind of ...
Ken G's user avatar
  • 5,300
5 votes

Directionality of solar flares

First, I have provided some background on these phenomena at: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/16786/13663 Solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are not the same phenomena. I am aware ...
honeste_vivere's user avatar
5 votes
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Has the rate of time passage been measured?

Yes, there are two good examples that I know of that have been used to show that a natural phenomenon appears to show time dilation that is consistent with the redshift that they are observed at. ...
ProfRob's user avatar
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4 votes
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How bad could we reasonably expect a solar flare to impact earth, and what can be done to mitigate the impact?

Space Weather is the field within heliophysics that tries to understand this Sun-Earth relationship. When a Solar Flare occurs multiple things may happen and how it interacts with the Earth and our ...
dvdgc13's user avatar
  • 393
4 votes
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Any new info about solar flares hitting the Moon added by the LADEE mission?

You'd probably be most interested in the results of the Lunar Dust EXperiment (LDEX). A 2015 paper states LDEX data show no evidence for an electrostaticallylofted dust component at densities ...
Dave's user avatar
  • 801
4 votes
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Can a planet's gravity rip out its moon's atmosphere?

It's probably rare that moons have atmospheres to begin with. Planets don't generate solar flares. Planets emit thermal radiation as a result of their heat and during formation and collision planets ...
userLTK's user avatar
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4 votes
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Solar flare generate energetic protons. Where do the electrons go?

The solar wind, and more generally plasma in space is not charged on average; it is electrically neutral. That means you have the positively charged ions and the corresponding amount of electrons. In ...
planetmaker's user avatar
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4 votes
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What would be the effect of a large solar flare on motor vehicles?

Never drive a car which is larger than a football field during a solar storm Otherwise, don't worry about it. The answer to Does a geomagnetic storm visibly deflect a compass? shows the plot below ...
uhoh's user avatar
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3 votes
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What online tools are available to investigate and classify solar eruptions?

How are these flares tracked after they've been detected? Since you already linked to https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/16786/13663, I won't belabor the differences between a solar flare and ...
honeste_vivere's user avatar
3 votes
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Any active solar X-ray imager in orbit?

The Hinode satellite has an active x-ray telescope that is routinely used to image the sun. And the NuSTAR extreme x-ray telescope can also be used for sun imaging (although its main job is looking ...
James K's user avatar
  • 115k
3 votes
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Does Earth's magnetic field become stronger when a solar flare hits?

No, but the magnetic dipole of Earth has a field strength that increases with closer distance. On the direct line between Earth and Sun the magnetic field strength is always $B(r) = M/r^3$ where $M$ ...
AtmosphericPrisonEscape's user avatar
3 votes
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Is it possible for a solar flare in one star to influence the chances of a solar flare in another star?

I'd say it's an open question awaiting some observational evidence that it can happen. It presumably would depend a lot on what kind of situation you are looking for, and what would you call a flare ...
Ken G's user avatar
  • 5,300
3 votes

What is the largest recorded solar flare?

What is the largest recorded solar flare? Since @Moriarty already dealt with historical records, I will focus on the modern observations. X-Ray Classification On April 2, 2001 the GOES spacecraft ...
honeste_vivere's user avatar
3 votes

What are the main differences between solar flares and coronal mass ejections?

The following are largely excerpts from an answer I wrote at https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/258093/59023. What are the main differences between solar flares and coronal mass ejections? There ...
honeste_vivere's user avatar
3 votes

How bad could we reasonably expect a solar flare to impact earth, and what can be done to mitigate the impact?

It would be good business for the news industry: sky lights, plane crashes, exploding grid transformers, city blackouts, satellite damage, long, electricity-carrying wires would spark, start fires and ...
bandybabboon's user avatar
  • 4,188
3 votes

Is life (as we know it) even possible around M-class stars?

Check the ocean floor If ionizing radiation is a concern, deep water is a very effective shield. It's theorized that life on Earth started around hydrothermal vents in the dark depths of the ocean, ...
Darth Pseudonym's user avatar
2 votes

How bad could we reasonably expect a solar flare to impact earth, and what can be done to mitigate the impact?

Satellites have been damaged before. GPS has been effected before. Power grids surge during magnetic disturbances. Pipelines energize too. March 13 1989 was a whopper. There's a lot of reporting ...
user18317's user avatar
2 votes

Can hot Jupiters cause solar flares?

Sun is more than one thousand times the mass of Jupiter, so it seems unlikely that even a very close approach by a "hot Jupiter" to its host star would cause a flare, and especially not a superflare.
Professor O's user avatar
2 votes
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Can hot Jupiters cause solar flares?

Just going off the Wikipedia article you posted, it says the hot jupiter superflare theory was abandoned. The flares were initially explained by postulating giant planets in very close orbits, ...
userLTK's user avatar
  • 23.9k
2 votes
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How to access the raw time-series dataset of GOES X-Ray Flux?

You can use SunPy, check the Retrieving and analyzing GOES X-Ray Sensor (XRS) data example. There it explains how to download data with a time range and if wanted selecting the GOES satellite number. ...
dvdgc13's user avatar
  • 393
2 votes

Detecting anomalies from the sun from home

The most extreme solar flares are visible as bright marks on the face of the sun and the most extreme CME are apparent as aurorae even at low latitudes. Detecting CME as they leave the sun is ...
James K's user avatar
  • 115k
2 votes

Strength of the relationship between very large solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and solar proton events?

First, have you looked through my answer at: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/16786/13663? First, is my understanding that either a large flare or a large CME could have caused a large solar ...
honeste_vivere's user avatar
2 votes

Physical properties of the stellar corona?

...how typical is the solar corona? The Sun is remarkably "average" (e.g., see https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/262732/59023). So my best guess is that the corona is also remarkably &...
honeste_vivere's user avatar
2 votes
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What could be the cause of solar "campfires"?

When all we have is a hammer, sometimes we run the risk of thinking everything is a nail - and sometimes that naivety can lead to new discoveries in lieu of better explanations/theories. In terms of ...
Daddy Kropotkin's user avatar

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