Scientists have reason to believe that solar flares may be somehow linked with the "starquake" solar phenomena occasionally experienced by our solar system's sun. Images taken from the ESA-NASA SOHO spacecraft may give some clue to the long-standing mystery behind the sun's interior make-up. You can read more about the details of this study in our full article.

The solar telescope-toting spacecraft Hironde of Japan has made a significant discovery in how the sun's chronosphere actually works. The red layer was once thought of as a relatively peaceful part of the sun, but that belief has been debunked.

  

The chronosphere actually hosts a multitude of violent solar flares every day. What starts as a huge magnetic vortex floats around, twisting, and suddenly explodes to shoot a high-intensity solar flare. NASA's solar physicist says that when they first saw the spectacle staff members almost fell out of their seats. "I managed to stay in my seat, but just barely" he recalls.

Solar flares are huge jets of hot gas that shoot up from the sun's photosphere and fall back again. Scientists believe that they must be triggered by magnetic instabilities in the star, but even after years of observation, experts found no explanation as to how exactly they are formed.

Hironde, astronomers hope, could be the catalyst for a huge discovery. The Solar Optical telescope it carries is the cutting edge of space observation technology, prompting many to call the spacecraft "the Hubble of the Sun." The spacecraft was launched in September of 2006 on a mission to gain more understanding on sunspots and solar flares. The name Hironde means "sunrise" in Japanese.

  

Tsunamis seem to be one phenomenon our planet shares with the mighty Sun. Scientists have reportedly spotted a major flare earlier this week using a prototype of a new solar telescope in New Mexico.

Formerly identified as a Moreton wave, the spotted tsunami-like shockwave "rolled across the hot surface, destroying two visible filaments of cool gas on opposite sides of the visible face of the Sun."

According to K.S. Balasubramaniam of the National Solar Observatory in Sunspot, NM, while these large scale 'blast' waves happen infrequently, they are undoubtedly powerful. "They quickly propagate in a matter of minutes covering the whole Sun, sweeping away filamentary material."

The captured 'tsunami' occurred like the splash form a rock thrown into a pond. Scientists saw this as a brightening from compressed and heated hydrogen gas. The two filaments that disappeared for a few minutes cannot be accounted for by the scientists if they were indeed blown off or were just compressed, hence the temporary invisibility.

Skywatchers in Alaska, Canada and the very northernmost United States are encouraged to stick their heads out this weekend for colorful Northern Lights. Apparently, there seems to be a stormy space season going on up there. There is a 40% chance of more major flares through this weekend, in fact, says forecasters.

A Slovakia doctor has stated in his that solar flare activity is linked to an increase in brain hemorrhages and strokes. Dr. Michal Kovak has been conducting this study since the 1980s.

The doctor has been investigating the incidence of strokes in Nove Zamky, in southern Slovakia, and he has observed that the number of stroke patients increase on certain days, weeks, months or years. He found that there is a correlation between 11-year peaks in strokes and coronal mass ejections.

Another observation he made was that relatively fewer people suffered strokes during the moon's apogee. In his findings, he stated that the fluctuations in the earth's geomagnetic field affect people physically.

Even with these observations though, Dr. Kovak still has no clear explanation for all these. He says that the correlation between the human body and the solar and lunar phenomena is present, but he doesn't know how exactly to explain that correlation.