Should You Be Worried About The Massive ‘Hole’ Found On The Sun?

Scientists are always keeping an eye on the star at the center of our solar system in order to monitor for anomalies. That’s why an announcement on Friday prompted some people around the world to fret about the potential ramifications.

The second recent discovery

According to astronomers at NASA and the Solar Dynamics Observatory, a “coronal hole” roughly the size of 20 Earths was spotted near the sun’s equator. Although that’s massive, it’s not as big as a previous hole that covered an area of the sun’s surface about 30 times bigger than our home planet.

As it turns out, however, the position of the hole matters more than its size … at least from our perspective. Most of them occur near the sun’s poles, which means that the powerful solar winds that result are spewed out into the depths of space.

Since the latest one is closer to the equator, experts say we’ll almost certainly see some evidence of the winds that can travel nearly 2 million miles per hour.

Preparing for impact

While solar winds can cause interruptions of satellites and certain other technologies, scientists say they’re not too worried about such problems in this case. Instead, the most likely evidence that we’ve been hit with a blast from the sun is the presence of auroras in the skies over multiple regions of the planet.

University of Reading space physics professor Mathew Owens explained: “This one being at the equator means we’re pretty much guaranteed to see some fast wind at Earth a couple of days after it rotates past central meridian.”

These holes tend to open up during periods of increased solar activity, which occur once a decade or so. The best opportunity to witness the effects of these winds will be Friday or Saturday.

Chris Agee March 28th, 2023

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