Astronomers confirmed that 22 years ago, on July 14, 2000, a massive flare on the Sun sent shock waves to the edge of the solar system recorded by NASA’s Voyager probes.
Scientists confirmed the possibility of repeating the Bastille Day event, especially that the activity of Solar Cycle 25 is increasing with the expectation that it will reach its maximum activity in 2025.
Scientists reported that the solar explosion was called the “Bastille Day incident” because it occurred in conjunction with the French National Day, where subatomic particles were pushed by the glow towards satellites and penetrated deep into the Earth’s atmosphere, and were recorded by radiation sensors on the Earth’s surface in a rare event.
According to the University of Surrey Space Center in Guildford, UK, people who were traveling in commercial airliners at high latitudes were exposed to twice the usual radiation doses, which were the strongest in the past 20 years, scientists reported.
One day later, the coronal mass ejection “cloud of ionized gas” reached the Earth’s magnetic field on 15 July and caused a severe geomagnetic storm (Kp = 9) that resulted in the exceptional appearance of the aurora borealis.
Eyewitnesses in North America mention that they saw bright red twilights in the sky that are not the colors of sunset, and it is very rare to see the aurora borealis in remote areas in the far south of the North Pole, where the sky glowed with light as if it was on fire. The end to the red color that covered the sky from horizon to horizon.
By the time the storm subsided on July 16, the aurora borealis were observed as far south as Texas, Florida and Mexico.
Some other solar storms occurred and were just as strong, but the Bastille Day incident is of exceptional importance because it was the first major solar storm after the launch of the Soho Space Observatory in 1995, where data from that space observatory provided scientists with much, and very quickly, about the physics of intense flares.
Many researchers are still studying the Bastille Day event decades later, the glow near the center of the sun’s disk meant a panoramic view of it, and recently using a recent magnetohydrodynamic computer model on some data, it was found that 1033 (ERG) of magnetic energy was released in the explosion Roughly a thousand billion atomic bombs from World War II, so it’s no surprise that the Voyager probes felt that glow.
Coronal mass ejections from the Bastille Day incident took months to reach the distant spacecraft – 180 days for Voyager 2, and 245 days for Voyager 1. Because the two spacecraft are near the edge of the solar system, they were naturally engulfed in high levels of cosmic rays, but When the coronal mass ejection engulfed the radiation surrounding the probes, it triggered a temporary depression called the “Vorbush drop” and then conditions returned to normal 3 to 4 months later, and finally, the storm ended.
Read also| Astronomer: James Webb revolutionized understanding of the universe and unlocked mysteries