Sun Fires Off Second Solar Storm This Week

The sun fired off an intense solar storm at Earth Wednesday, the second in two days.

The blase hurtled billions of tons of charged particles at Earth, but NASA says that the particles shouldn’t pose a threat to people on the ground.

According to Fox News, the solar eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, occurred Wednesday at 1:24 a.m. EDT (0524 GMT) and sent charged particles streaking outward at 380 miles per second. “That’s just over 1.3 million mph.”

The report continued on to say that the solar fallout from the sun storm is expected to reach earth within the next two to three days.

Now this all may sound intimidating, but NASA says we have nothing to worry about.

“These particles cannot travel through the atmosphere to harm humans on Earth, but they can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground,” NASA officials explained in a statement.

According to Space.com, Wednesday’s solar storm erupted just 21 hours after another powerful coronal mass ejection on Tuesday.

The Inquisitr reported on this solar storm (also known as CMEs), which took place on Tuesday, August 20 at 4:24 a.m. EDT (0824 GMT).

“Experimental NASA research models based on observations from NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 570 miles per second, which is a fairly typical speed for CMEs,” NASA officials wrote in an update on Tuesday.

Just like Wednesday’s solar storm, Tuesday solar storm didn’t appear to have enough power to cause too much trouble on planet Earth.

“Earth-directed CMEs can cause a space weather phenomenon called a geomagnetic storm, which occurs when they funnel energy into Earth’s magnetic envelope, the magnetosphere, for an extended period of time,” NASA officials said in a description of Wednesday’s solar eruption.

“The CME’s magnetic fields peel back the outermost layers of Earth’s fields changing their very shape. In the past, geomagnetic storms caused by CMEs of this strength have usually been mild.”

According to Fox News, the sun is currently in an active phase of its 11-year solar weather cycle and is expected to reach its peak activity later this year. The current cycle is known as Solar Cycle 24.

It is proving to be the weakest in the past 100 years with relatively few solar storms, CMEs, and other weather events.

[Images via Space.com]