[SFDXA] A BIG PUNY SOLAR FLARE:

[Kai]

Hi Bill,
Humbling numbers to ponder! BIG and PUNY span quite a range. The BIG "100 
Million WW-II A-bombs" works out to 10-to-the-20th power Watt Hours of energy. 
Just two of those A-bombs snuffed out 150,000 lives at about a giga joule per 
person.

PUNY is the 2400 to 3000 Watt hours of energy consumed and radiated by a human 
body in a day.

REALLY PUNY is a common AA battery, which has enough energy to power a human 
body for about 4 to 5 minutes. Bon appetite! Eight of them will power your QRP 
rig for an hour or two.

And don't worry about that sustained nuclear reaction we call the Sun. Gravity 
holds it together while it's been burning for about 4.6 billion years; still has 
enough fuel left for another 4 billion years. That's a relief!
Kindest regards,
Kai, KE4PT

On 4/6/2020 08:40, Bill wrote:
> *A BIG PUNY SOLAR FLARE: The biggest solar flare of the year happened over the 
> weekend. But don't get excited; it was puny. On April 4th, NASA's Solar 
> Dynamics Observatory captured the ultraviolet flash from new-cycle sunspot 
> AR2759:
>
> This is a B4-class flare. It caused only a brief and ephemeral wave of 
> ionization to ripple through our planet's upper atmosphere. There were no 
> radio blackouts, GPS disturbances, or satellite outages. Only during Solar 
> Minimum would such a flare receive any attention at all.
>
> On the other hand, perhaps "B" stands for "Bigger than you think." A typical 
> B-class solar flare releases as much energy as 100 million WWII atomic bombs. 
> Only on the sun, which is itself a 1027 ton self-contained nuclear explosion, 
> would such a blast be considered "puny."
>
> So did something big happen? Or not? Yes to both.
>
> https://spaceweather.com/
>
>
>