A giant blast of plasma spat from the sun at as much as 4 million miles per hour Tuesday -- by some measures the largest solar event since late 2006 -- and it could lead to serious issues on Earth, forcing some planes to reroute, knocking out power grids, and blacking out radios.
The sun unleashed the cosmic double whammy late March 6, erupting with two major flares to cap a busy day of powerful solar storms, Space.com reported. One of the flares is the most powerful solar eruption so far this year.
“Super Tuesday? You bet!” joked Joseph Kunches, a space weather scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Both of the huge flares ranked as X-class storms, the strongest type of solar flares the sun can have. They followed several weaker, but still powerful, sun storms on Tuesday and came just days after another major solar flare on Sunday night.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/07/sun-fires-off-2-huge-solar-flares-could-impact-weather-on-earth/?intcmp=features#ixzz1oSJj3l00
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