Published on February 18, 2017
Seen here in this video montage, a powerful solar flare that occurred on October 22, 2012. It was unleashed by the Sun and sent out radiation into space that caused a radio blackout on earth.
These spectacular images of the event were released by the space agency NASA, which described it as a X1.8-class flare.
Solar flares involve powerful bursts of radiation, although the radiation cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground. But when intense enough they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel – and potentially disrupt radio signals for anywhere between minutes to hours.
