When there is a solar
flare, it is the coronal mass ejection’s hot plasma gas cloud containing radioactive
material, protons, electrons, etc. with vast amounts of electrical energy in intensely
fast moving nebulae that reaches the earth’s atmosphere and damages sensitive
equipment, not the solar flare itself.
Coronal Mass Ejections
occur when the solar flare becomes so hot that a rope of heated magnetism stretching between two sunspots breaks in two. It takes several days for the
plasma to cool down enough to detach. Then, the magnetic cloud called a solar
wind is released exceeding speeds of seven million mph and hurtles toward us.
Once the cloud reaches the Earth,
it causes anomalies in our ionosphere. In early March 1989, a cloud 36 times
the size of Earth caused the Space Shuttle Discovery to spin out of control for
several hours. And, in June of 2012, the coronal mass ejection from a Class-M
solar flare's cloud caused minor damage to the Spitzer Space Telescope.
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