Will Solar Flare Create Static?

Fierce solar blasts that could have badly damaged electrical grids and disabled satellites in space narrowly missed Earth in 2012, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. The bursts would have wreaked havoc on the Earth’s magnetic field, matching the severity of the 1859 Carrington event, the largest solar magnetic storm ever reported on the planet. That blast knocked out the telegraph system across the United States, according to University of California, Berkeley research physicist Janet Luhmann.

The sun unleashed a colossal Mother's Day solar flare on Sunday (May 12) in what has become the most powerful solar eruption of the year.

WASHINGTON — Northerners thawing out from a bitter freeze may get rewarded with shimmering northern lights over the next couple of days. U.S. space weather forecaster Joe Kunches said the sun shot out a strong solar flare late Tuesday. It should shake up Earth’s magnetic field and expand the Aurora Borealis south. He said best viewing would probably be Thursday evening, weather permitting.

Gamma-ray bursts are the brightest and most powerful explosions that happen in the entire universe. And German researchers are now saying one may have hit Earth in the 8th century. This would be a rarity, as gamma-ray bursts once every 10,000 to one million years per galaxy. According to V. V. Hambaryan and R. Neuhauser’s research on this electromagnetic event, “this is the first evidence for a short gamma-ray burst in our galaxy.”

The sun's solar weather cycle is it at its peak this year, and today (March 5) you can get an up-close look at Earth's nearest star through an Arizona telescope in a live webcast.

Any number of things can go wrong in the world that could ultimately effect what happens in the financial markets. Art Cashin, the veteran NYSE trader at UBS Financial Services, warns about a risk that's literally out of this world. From this morning's Cashin's Comments:

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory has been keeping an eye on the sun for three years now, and in honor of that achievement, they have released this video of the changes our star has been through during the last three years. The video shows the increase in solar flares and coronal mass ejections (which send rivers of matter and radiation out into the solar system). The sun is reaching its 11-year solar maximum and the frequency of these events have been increasing.

A huge solar flare that erupted out of the sun on Thursday should hit the earth today and cause a cataclysmic flipping of the earth?s magnetic polarity. That would make a great viral video, but it?s simply not true. The ?blob of charged plasma? is expected to??pass harmelessly by the earth today. The??Space Weather Prediction ...