How do solar flares unfold — and can we predict them?
If you think predicting weather on Earth is hard, try predicting weather on the Sun. Understanding when and why powerful solar flares erupt from the Sun's surface, often spewing out torpedoes of charged particles and plasma, is one of most difficult challenges in astrophysics.
Now, a team of researchers in Japan have proposed a new, physics-based technique that can predict, in many cases, whether or not a solar flare is about to occur. Not only that, the technique can also pinpoint where the flare will erupt on the Sun, as well as roughly how powerful it will be. Though the research is still in the proof-of-concept stage, the plan is to incorporate the model into real-time solar forecasts within the next couple of years — perhaps helping protect us from the next
Carrington Event.
"It provides a very important foundation, and it brings a bit more physics into it than the other methods," says Astrid Veronig, a solar physicist at the University of Graz who was not part of the new research, but wrote a
commentary accompanying the article's
publication in Science on July 30.
