Storms In The Void: Space Weather And Childhood's End

From NPR -- It begins on the sun's surface: a broad, hellish plain of boiling 5,700 degree gas. Powerful magnetic fields arc upwards from the surface, rising high into the solar atmosphere to form giant, twisting arcades of energy. Matter streams up these arches to be gripped in a magnetic vise a million miles above the surface. Then something happens. Something shifts. Magnetic lines of force in the arcade snap like steel cables on the bridge to heaven. Billions of tons of solar gas are suddenly blown outward, exploding across interplanetary space. Three days later the shimmering ball of energy smashes head-on into the unsuspecting Earth.

While the paragraph above might sound like the beginning of a bad science fiction movie it's really nothing more than a slightly hyperbolic description of the last three days... To read the full article, click here.