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the secret lives of solar flares brought

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to you by science at nasa

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152 years ago a man in england named

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richard carrington discovered solar

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flares

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it happened at 11 18 a.m on the

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cloudless morning of thursday september

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1st 1859

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just as usual on every sunny day the 33

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year old solar astronomer was busy in

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his private observatory projecting an

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image of the sun onto a screen and

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sketching what he saw

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on that particular morning he traced the

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outlines of an enormous group of

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sunspots

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suddenly before his eyes two brilliant

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beads of white light appeared over the

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sunspots they were so bright he could

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barely stand to look at the screen

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carrington cried out but by the time a

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witness arrived minutes later the first

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solar flare anyone had ever seen was

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over it would not be the last

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since then astronomers have recorded

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thousands of strong flares using

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instruments ranging from the simplest

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telescopes in backyard observatories to

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the most complex spectrometers on

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advanced spacecraft possibly no other

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phenomenon in astronomy has been studied

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as much

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after all that scrutiny you might

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suppose that everything about solar

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flares would be known

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far from it

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last week researchers announced that

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solar flares have been keeping a secret

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and it's a big one

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we've just learned that some flares are

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many times stronger than previously

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thought says university of colorado

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physicist tom woods who led the research

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team solar flares were already the

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biggest explosions in the solar system

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and this discovery makes them even

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bigger

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nasa's solar dynamics observatory

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launched in february 2010 revealed the

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secret

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about one in seven flares experiences a

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sort of aftershock

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90 minutes or so after the flare dies

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down it springs to life again producing

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an extra surge of extreme ultraviolet

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radiation

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we call it the late phase flare says

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woods

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the energy in the late phase can exceed

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the energy of the primary flare by as

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much as a factor of four

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the extra energy has a big effect on

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earth

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extreme ultraviolet wavelengths are

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particularly good at heating and

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ionizing earth's upper atmosphere

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when our planet's atmosphere is heated

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by extreme uv radiation it puffs up

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accelerating the decay of low orbiting

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satellites

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furthermore the ionizing action of

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extreme uv can bend radio signals and

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disrupt the normal operation of gps

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sdo was able to make the discovery

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because of its unique ability to monitor

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the sun's extreme uv output in high

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resolution 24 hours a day seven days a

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week

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with that kind of scrutiny it's tough to

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keep a secret even one that's 152 years

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old