Huge solar eruptions fired bursts of charged particles at us on two successive days last week. The first outburst, on 28 October, was the largest aimed at the Earth in 30 years, knocking out two Japanese satellites and affecting telecommunications and power grids across the globe. But it seems we were lucky this time - the impact of the flares would have been much worse if their magnetic fields had been aligned differently, according to researchers. However, the storm was perfectly timed to rally support for the US space weather center, which is endangered by budget cuts. Both flares came from the same massive group of sunspots, which is rotating around the surface of the sun. The first occurred at 1154 GMT on 28 October, as the group neared the middle of the sun's face. The second came at 2037 GMT the following day, after the spots had crossed the mid line. Respectively, they were the third and 15th most intense flares recorded since 1976, according to John Kohl of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. And until last week two such intense flares had never been recorded so close together. "I've not seen anything like it in my entire career as a solar physicist," says Kohl.
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