Posted November 29, 2018 06:22:16If you’ve got the time, you may have noticed the sky has a dark and eerie atmosphere.
It’s not because the sky is too dark for any kind of natural phenomenon to take place.
In fact, many of the dark areas in the sky are actually caused by the formation of solar flares and other radiation, which emit light at high energies.
The sun is just one of many stars that produce these “starbursts”, and in the event of an eruption, these flares can reach far into space.
These explosions, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), can happen at speeds up to 25,000 km/s (15,000 miles/h), which means they can easily hit Earth.
“It’s a very small part of the solar system that we can really get into space,” Dr Andrew Jansen, an astrophysicist at the Australian National University (ANU), said.
“So it’s very easy for CMEs to get into Earth’s atmosphere, and it can cause a big impact.”
Dr Jansen said the solar flare activity was a good indicator that the sun was starting to cool, which would make it more difficult for more CME events to occur.
He said the sky was likely to get a bit more dark by the end of the year.
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