The Sun is very active right now, having unleashed the biggest solar storms on Earth in the past 20 years. However, our planet is no exception: it is doing the same thing to the rest of the Solar System.
The Sun is very active these days, and this affects not only Earth, but the rest of the solar system as well. The effects of solar flares can be very diverse, and we will now take a look at them one by one.
If we look up at the sky for a few nights in May 2024, there’s a good chance we’ll see something spectacular. However, for people living at relatively low latitudes, the prospect of seeing the flashing red, pink or green light of our planet’s aurora borealis is rare. BBC.com.
A powerful solar storm sent streams of charged particles hurtling towards Earth, and as they bounced around in our planet's atmosphere, they enabled the spectacular display of the Northern and Southern Lights.
This time the dazzling display of aurora borealis occurred much further south than usual, and in the case of the northern lights, much further, thanks to the strength of the geomagnetic storm, which proved to be the strongest in two decades.
While some people only experienced a faint, eerie light, others saw a myriad of colors as far south as London, England and Ohio, USA. There were even reports from as far north as San Francisco, California.
But while the explosion of solar activity delighted many on Earth because of the lights it produced, it also had a profound effect on other parts of the solar system.
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While most people watched the colors dance across the night sky, astronomers studied the heavens more closely. They sought to observe how these intense bursts of particles strangely affect other planets and the space between them.
“The sun can shoot material in any direction, like a garden sprinkler,” said Jim Wild, professor of space physics at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. “The effects of a solar flare can be felt throughout the solar system.”
Our Sun is currently approaching, or has already reached, solar maximum — the point in an 11-year cycle when it is most active.
This means the Sun is emitting more bursts of radiation and particles from solar flares and events known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). If they are sprayed toward us, they can charge the Earth’s magnetic field, which can cause a brilliant light show. However, it can also cause problems for satellites and power grids.
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“Things seem to be accelerating now,” said Matthew Owens, an astrophysicist at the University of Reading in Britain. “I think we’re at the solar peak now, so in the next couple of years we could see more storms like this.”
Several spacecraft are currently closely monitoring the increased activity around the Sun.
One of these, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Solar Orbiter, has been studying the sun since 2020 in an orbit that passes Mercury. The spacecraft is currently “on the far side of the sun from Earth,” said Daniel Müller, mission scientist for ESA’s Solar Orbiter in the Netherlands. “So we see everything that Earth can’t see.”
“terribly active areas”
The storm, which reached Earth in May 2024, originated in an active region of solar flares, sunspots, plasma explosions and twisted magnetic fields on the sun’s surface called the photosphere. The solar orbiter was able to “see many eruptions from this terribly active region that were rotated from Earth’s perspective,” Muller said. Here, the scientist noted bright flashes of light and dark areas on the sun’s surface called sunspots.
One of Solar Orbiter's goals, Muller said, is to connect events on the sun's surface and in the heliosphere. The heliosphere is a huge bubble of plasma that envelops the sun and the planets of the solar system as they travel through interstellar space.
Müller and his colleagues are confident that they will learn more about where the solar wind blows, that is, about the constant flow of particles streaming from the Sun through the solar system into the “interstellar medium.” “I am particularly interested in all the energy in the Sun that can be found in the turbulence of the solar wind,” the specialist said.
This particular cycle, the 25th, appears to be significantly more active than people expected, Mueller noted. The relative sunspot number — an indicator used to measure activity on the sun’s visible surface — is blocking out what we saw as sunlight, the peak of the previous solar cycle, he added.
Earth is not the only planet exposed to solar storms.
American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) In May, it predicted a daily maximum of 124 sunspots on a monthly basis, but the actual number was an average of 170 — with over 240 per day. Meanwhile, the exact cause of the sun’s 11-year cycle and its volatility remains a mystery, said Daniel Müller.
However, the effects of these changes in solar activity extend throughout the solar system. Earth is not the only planet that experiences solar storms as it moves through interplanetary space.
For example, Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun, has a much weaker magnetic field than Earth's — about 100 times smaller — and no significant atmosphere. Solar activity can cause the planet's surface to be streaked with X-rays as the solar wind blows.
Venus also lacks a large magnetic field, but the planet still creates auroras when solar winds interact with the planet's ionosphere, the researcher said.
