A historically huge sunspot has unleashed a flurry of super-powerful solar storms directly toward our planet. When they hit this weekend, they will shake up our magnetic shield and trigger widespread auroras over North America, experts predict.
The sunspot responsible for the incoming barrage, AR3664, is at least 15 times wider than Earth, making it the biggest sunspot of the current solar cycle. The immense dark patch, which is around the same size as the sunspot that birthed the infamous Carrington Event in 1859, has spat out more than 50 solar flares in the last 48 hours, including four X-class flares — the most powerful type of solar flare the sun is capable of producing, according to SpaceWeatherLive.com. The most powerful of these X-class flares was an X2.2 magnitude blast that triggered radio blackouts across Europe, Africa and the Middle East on Thursday (May 9). Further X-class flares are still possible.
