An enormous, rapidly growing sunspot on the sun's surface has unleashed a mighty X-class flare — the most powerful type of solar flare the sun is capable of producing. The solar storm slammed into our planet, triggering brief radio blackouts in parts of the U.S. and elsewhere, but it could have been a lot worse, experts warned.
The enormous dark patch, named AR3354, emerged on the solar surface on June 27 and within 48 hours had grown to cover around 1.35 billion square miles (3.5 billion square kilometers), or 10 times wider than Earth. Space weather scientists were alarmed by the colossal sunspot's rapid emergence and feared it could spit out a barrage of potentially harmful solar storms, according to Spaceweather.com.
