You may have heard a fellow amateur radio operator make the statement, “a solar flare is heading our way, so conditions will be terrible.” Even in popular news media we find or hear statements like this. A report like, “A spectacular coronal mass ejection on July 4 sent a solar flare heading our way at a speed of 1,400 kilometers per second. The flare, said to be of medium size, is likely to result in a solar storm with spectacular aurora and other space weather effects that have the potential to cause some communications, navigation, and power-grid problems.” Do a search on your favorite search engine for ‘solar flares heading our way’ and see at how popular this phrase has become. The problem with these statements is that they are inaccurate.
Is it true that solar flares head our way? In truth, the answer is one of clarification. Technically, solar flares do not head our way, in the way that these statements imply. Faithful readers of this column know that solar flares often trigger a complex series of events that may lead to the release of solar plasma clouds that do come our direction, but also know that the flare itself is a nearly instant release of energy much like the flashing of a flash bulb on a camera.
Solar flares are good examples of some of the most energetic natural explosive events known to man. Complex magnetic looping structures concentrated in an active sunspot region suddenly snap apart. Radiation is emitted across virtually the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from longwave radio frequencies, through the
