Our nearest star has woken up for real and for sure. After several years of stubbornsilence, the Sun has unleashed several fairly big explosions of material. Called Coronal Mass Ejections, or CMEs, these gigantic events blast out hundreds of billions of tons of matter into space. They create vast interplanetary shock waves, and when they reach the Earth can cause all sorts of havoc. They are different from solar flares, but have similar origins in the Sun's magnetic field.
NASA's recently-launched Solar Dynamics Observatory caught the action mid-eruption. This image shows million-degree-hot gas blasting off the surface, entangled in the Sun's strong magnetic field. The most recent CMEs probably won't do much more than give us pretty aurorae -- they've already been spotted -- which is good (worse effects are the loss of satellites and potential blackouts on Earth). In fact, if you live in the far north or south ...
