Technologies

NASA captures violent flash from sun’s mini eruption

Check out this beautiful image of our very own star’s minor tantrum.

On Thursday, our sun released its pent-up energy in the form of a little magnetic bomb. It’s called a solar flare, and NASA caught the whole thing on camera.

Solar flares, which are sudden explosions on the sun’s surface caused by strong magnetic forces, are of concern to astronomers because these events can impact electrical power grids on Earth, causing regional blackouts. They also risk interference with radio communications.

«This event, in particular, disrupted radio communications over the Indian and Pacific oceans — so its likely biggest impact was a disruption of maritime communications,» said Jesse Woodroffe, a program scientist and expert in space weather at NASA.

Even more jarring is if astronauts are in the flares’ line of fire, such detonations may greatly threaten space traveler and spacecraft safety. The good news, though, is NASA categorized the recent flare as a category M5.5 midlevel eruption, which corresponds to both a moderate severity and radio blackout threat for the side of the planet facing the burst.

«It’s not exceptionally strong in the grand scheme of things,» Woodroffe said, «but it nevertheless can have significant effects depending on what portion of the Earth is sunlit at the time of the flare.»

For now we can just sit back and admire the spectacular image captured by the agency in «extreme ultraviolet light,» colorized in an absolutely mesmerizing teal blue.

Around 300 M-class flares occur during each solar cycle, and they’re most likely to occur near solar maximum, a point we’re steadily approaching, according to Woodroffe. «Right now this is shaping up to be a much more active and interesting solar cycle than the last one. That means that we could be in store for solar activity the likes of which we haven’t seen in nearly 20 years.»

What causes a solar flare?

Instead of a glowing orb, think of the sun as a giant, flaming, spherical ocean. This ocean is so ridiculously hot, at 5,778 Kelvin (9940.73 Fahrenheit), that would-be atoms on the star are completely blasted apart into a gaseous mixture of ions and electrons called a plasma.

These particles, with varying positive and negative charges, work together to form the sun’s magnetic field lines, thereby deciding how the boiling ocean moves around. Think of it as a sort of immensely strong, magnetic soup — more precisely, picture a chicken noodle soup. The noodles are the sun’s magnetic fields.

However, just as stirring your soup in search of a baby carrot can tangle your noodles, these charged-up, magnetic lines can grow tangled, most often near sunspots. Eventually, as regions of the spaghetti-like magnetic fields form complex knots and push and pull on each other, they experience an energy overload.

That forces them to explode into space, revealing a fiery loop on the side of our enormous star, called a solar flare.

«There is also a potential for solar flares to cluster, meaning the occurrence of one could presage the appearance of more, potentially stronger flares,» Woodroffe said. «Thus, monitoring for events such as this is important because it could be the precursor of something more serious.»

And sometimes, the fiery loop stretches out until it becomes taut enough to sort of snap off, resulting in a coronal mass ejection. «A coronal mass ejection is, in essence, a little bit of the sun that gets blown off and sent flying into space towards Earth,» Woodroffe said.

Once it snaps off, the ejected portion heads directly toward our planet, picking up space-borne particles along the way and causing what’s called a solar storm. Thankfully, Earth’s atmosphere protects us from the brunt of the charged particles, with only relatively few getting caught in our planet’s shield. When that happens, though, we look up at these trapped, zippy particles in awe.

They appear to us as the Northern Lights.

«I don’t know if there was a coronal mass ejection associated with this flare, but we are expecting the possible arrival of a coronal mass ejection associated with a flare that occurred on Jan. 18,» Woodroffe said. «So, even if it’s not because of this flare, we could very well see some nice auroras this weekend.»

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Nov. 26, #899

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for Nov. 26, #899

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is kind of tough, with a really goofy purple category. If you need help sorting the answers into groups, you’re in the right place. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Maybe?

Green group hint: Kate and Liz would also qualify.

Blue group hint: Think banking terms.

Purple group hint: Furry friends, with a twist.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Verbs expressing possibility.

Green group: Women’s nicknames.

Blue group: Financial abbreviations.

Purple group: Backwards animals.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is verbs expressing possibility. The four answers are can, could, may and might.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is women’s nicknames. The four answers are Deb, Jan, Kat and Sue.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is financial abbreviations. The four answers are APR, CFO, IRA and SEC.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is backwards animals. The four answers are flow (wolf), god (dog), mar (ram) and tab (bat).

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Toughest Connections puzzles

We’ve made a note of some of the toughest Connections puzzles so far. Maybe they’ll help you see patterns in future puzzles.

#5: Included «things you can set,» such as mood, record, table and volleyball.

#4: Included «one in a dozen,» such as egg, juror, month and rose.

#3: Included «streets on screen,» such as Elm, Fear, Jump and Sesame.

#2: Included «power ___» such as nap, plant, Ranger and trip.

#1: Included «things that can run,» such as candidate, faucet, mascara and nose.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Nov. 26 #633

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Nov. 26, No. 633.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle has a fun topic, especially if you love a certain mode of travel. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: All aboard!

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Choo-choo!

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

GASP, GASPS, GAPS, PERT, SLEEP, GRATE, RATE, RAIN, BOAT, PASS

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

COACH, QUIET, DINING, SLEEPER, OBSERVATION

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is PASSENGERTRAIN. To find it, start with the P that’s five letters down on the far left, and wind across and up.

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Toughest Strands puzzles

Here are some of the Strands topics I’ve found to be the toughest in recent weeks.

#1: Dated slang, Jan. 21. Maybe you didn’t even use this lingo when it was cool. Toughest word: PHAT.

#2: Thar she blows! Jan.15. I guess marine biologists might ace this one. Toughest word: BALEEN or RIGHT.

#3: Off the hook, Jan. 9. Similar to the Jan. 15 puzzle in that it helps to know a lot about sea creatures. Sorry, Charlie. Toughest word: BIGEYE or SKIPJACK.