An exceptionally rare, "quadruple" solar flare just exploded from four different points across the sun's surface at almost the exact same time. The components of this interconnected, explosive tetrad may have also launched a solar storm toward Earth — which could potentially slam into our planet in the coming days.
The four-part eruption began at around 1:00 a.m. EDT on Tuesday (April 23), according to video footage captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. The near-simultaneous outbursts came from three sunspots and a large magnetic filament — a large loop of plasma suspended above the solar surface — located in between those three dark patches, Spaceweather.com reported. The blast sites were each separated by hundreds of thousands of miles, and the area between them covered around a third of the solar surface facing Earth.
