Giant Solar Flare Hits U.S., CanadaBy Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News
Sept. 12, 2005— A rowdy sunspot cluster hurled a record-breaking flare into space on Wednesday, blacking out all high- and low-frequency radio communications on both American continents, causing power surges, blinding satellites and lighting up aurorae, and more trouble is likely on the way, say experts.
A massive initial X-ray flare on Sept. 7 was immediately followed by an eruption of solar material that broke free from the sun at a speed of 5.8 million miles per hour, the speediest seen in 20 years of CME observations by the National Center for Atmospheric Research's High Altitude Observatory in Hawaii.
Earth and near-Earth space was first hit with X-rays, followed by an ongoing magnetic storm and hard radiation.
The sunspot cluster causing all the trouble was just coming around the edge of the sun last week. Now it has rotated with the sun into better view and is showing no signs of calming down, said Larry Combs, a space weather forecaster with the National Oceanic and Space Administration's Space Environment Center.
"This particular region (on the sun) is just now reaching the center of the sun," said Combs. "It's just now getting into the bull's-eye."
Power systems in the northern U.S. states and Canada reported electrical surges on Thursday, said Combs, caused by the magnetic pulse from the solar eruption interacting with Earth's magnetic field, essentially turning the planet into a giant electrical generator.
Strong northern lights, or aurora, were seen as far south as Arizona over the weekend, said Combs, another sign of the ongoing powerful "geomagnetic storm."
Even NASA is on alert, Combs said, with Johnson Space Center's radiation experts staffing their desks around the clock to ensure that astronauts aboard the International Space Station are ready for any shower of heavy radiation.
Among the satellites affected by the continuing storm are those used to monitor the sun, said Combs. The Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) satellite was getting saturated on some of its channels, he said, while the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) was seeing a lot of static.
The radio blackout caused by Wednesday's first flare was caused by X-rays smashing into Earth's upper atmosphere where they came to a halt with a loud radio-jamming roar. The magnetic storm that then followed was caused by a bubble of magnetized material from the sun colliding with Earth's magnetic field and revving up the planet like a gigantic generator.
The powerful solar storms come as a bit of a surprise, said Combs, since the sun is supposed to be in the quiet part of its 10- to 12-year cycle.
"This is the solar minimum," he said. "You think you can sit back, but not so."
But it's not all bad news. The unusually powerful event is also proving valuable to solar scientists who are trying to better understand what causes them and how they affect Earth.
"We need to understand what produces these effects," said Tom Holzer, a solar scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "They can have catastrophic effects on Earth," he said of this sort of flare and ejection from the sun's corona.
In this case, Earth luckily only received a glancing blow, but it was still good for scientific observations, he said. "This was a good event for us and we observed it well."
dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20050912/sunflare.htmldsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20050912/sunflare_02.html
But I've also had some amazing heart-based communions with others during this phase, as there are more people wanting a more "real" connection (maybe to ease the pains? dunno) and so that's been wonderful! 
