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

Verum Exchange Launches a $10 Bonus for Online Mining of Verum Coin and Bitcoin

Verum Exchange is expanding its online mining capabilities, allowing users to earn a $10 bonus while continuing to mine cryptocurrency directly from their smartphones. The feature is available not only in the currency converter app but also within Verum Messenger.

Online mining has long been part of the Verum ecosystem. Now, the company has added a new incentive to the existing feature — a bonus for participating in online mining.

The concept of online mining is changing the traditional perception of cryptocurrency mining. Users do not need to set up specialized mining equipment at home or deal with complex technical configurations. The feature can be accessed directly through the Verum digital ecosystem.

Verum Exchange: https://exchange.verum.im
Verum Messenger: https://ios.verum.im

Technologies

Supreme Court permits certain Trump mail-in voting restrictions before midterm elections

The Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that prevented the Trump administration from implementing new restrictions on mail-in voting, allowing the administration to proceed with its plan to impose new requirements on states ahead of the midterm elections.

The Supreme Court on Monday sided with President Donald Trump for now in his effort to impose sweeping new restrictions on distributing mail ballots, putting on hold a lower-court ruling that had blocked key parts of the plan ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The justices, over three dissents, paused a ruling by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston that prevented the Trump administration from carrying out portions of a March executive order involving the U.S. Postal Service and voter eligibility lists. The court’s three liberal justices dissented.

But the decision does not immediately allow the Postal Service to put its new mail-ballot system into effect.

A separate nationwide injunction issued Aug. 11 by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston still blocks USPS from implementing the new procedures for the Nov. 3 elections. The administration would have to overcome that order as well.

The distinction was central to the Supreme Court’s decision.

The majority said Trump’s executive order itself does not require states to change how they conduct elections. Instead, it directs federal agencies to develop policies that could later impose requirements on states. Because those policies had not yet been implemented when 23 states and Washington, D.C., challenged the order, the court said the challenge was premature.

The justices stressed they were not deciding whether Trump’s order or the policies developed under it are ultimately legal.

“The Court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful,” the majority wrote. “On that score, time will tell.”

The Postal Service last week finalized rules intended to carry out part of Trump’s order, including new requirements involving ballot envelopes, barcodes and information states must provide USPS. Those rules remain blocked by Talwani’s separate injunction.

The case now returns to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as the underlying legal fight continues. Some states have already started preparing to send ballots to military and overseas voters in early September.

Technologies

Trump targets Iran’s trade lifelines — here are the countries most exposed

Washington’s threat of “economic D-Day” collides with a small group of governments that account for most of what remains of Iran’s foreign trade.

The U.S. announced an “economic D-Day” campaign Monday to isolate Iran from the global economy, threatening penalties against “enablers” that continue doing business with Tehran.

The move is part of Washington’s bid to sever the trade lifeline that has sustained Tehran’s economy through nearly six months of war.

While enforcement details are sketchy, the threat could still put the U.S. on a collision course with some of Tehran’s major trade partners.

China

China is the biggest buyer of Iranian oil and serves as a crucial link to the global economy for Tehran, accounting for about 90% of its oil exports, according to the U.S. government.

China reported $9.96 billion in bilateral trade with Iran in 2025, excluding the roughly $31.2 billion in unreported Iranian crude oil exports to China that year, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

Independent Chinese refiners take in the bulk of it, often rebranded as Malaysian or Indonesian crude and settled through intermediaries outside the dollar system, according to Kpler. The U.S. Treasury has sanctioned several of those refineries this year for Iranian oil purchases, while sparing Chinese financial institutions.

Beijing has openly opposed U.S. sanctions against Iran, arguing that economic pressure will not resolve the disputes. In May, China ordered domestic firms to disregard U.S. sanctions on five refiners linked to the Iranian oil trade.

While Beijing is unlikely to push back directly on Washington’s sanctions push, it will “quietly step up compliance” among state banks and oil companies to avoid getting caught in the net, said Dan Wang, China director at Eurasia Group, pointing to “a dichotomy between the official statement and the private practice.”

“Chinese authorities care more about dollar access in financing and market entry to the U.S.,” she said.

United Arab Emirates

The Emirates, located just 50 miles from Iran across the Persian Gulf, has long been a major trading hub for Iran.

The bilateral trade amounted to around $28 billion in 2024, when the Emirates was its largest source of imports, contributing over 30%, according to the World Trade Organization data. The UAE was also Iran’s third-largest export destination, making up 12% of its shipments, totaling more than $7 billion.

That relationship hit a snag last week as the UAE moved to suspend all trade and financial transactions with Iran, following two ballistic missiles fired toward Emirati territory, one of which targeted UAE-owned tankers.

Iran has relied on UAE banks and its financial system to access the world economy through illicit, often murky transactions, and cutting off Iran would require more forceful actions from Emirati authorities to crack down on opaque financial and trading activity, according to U.S.-based think tank The Washington Institute.

“The majority of Iran’s transshipment, smuggling, and shadow banking activity takes place in Dubai, so Washington must do what it can to help the UAE’s national leaders in Abu Dhabi convince and cajole Dubai’s leaders to play ball,” Matthew Levitt, a former U.S. Treasury official, wrote in a note on Monday.

Turkey

Turkey maintains significant commercial ties with Tehran, importing Iranian natural gas and exporting manufactured goods south.

The Turkey-Iran bilateral trade reached $5.7 billion in 2024, according to the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with Ankara exporting mostly machinery and parts, chemical and agricultural products, while importing energy products from Tehran.

Meanwhile, under a 25-year gas supply contract between the two countries that expired at the end of July, Turkey’s imports of Iranian gas spiked this year while Iran’s share of Turkey’s total natural gas imports rose to 18.6%, according to local media.

While Ankara has sought to diversify toward other suppliers, expanding pipeline imports from Azerbaijan and Russia, it has, so far, not signaled that it intends to cut Iran off.

Iraq

Iraq, dependent on Iranian electricity and gas, has historically traded billions with Tehran.

Iran renewed a five-year contract in March 2024 to supply Iraq with up to nearly 660 billion cubic feet of natural gas a year, and electricity imports from Iran accounted for more than 30% of its electricity generation in 2023, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Iraq-Iran trade reached more than $10 billion in 2025, according to Reuters, with Tehran exporting food, consumer goods and other products to the Iraqi market. The trade has dwindled this year amid increased security risks in the region and intermittent disruptions along border crossings since the war started in late February.

Iraq reportedly pays Iran around $4 billion to $5 billion a year for natural gas for electricity generation. The fresh U.S. sanctions could curtail Baghdad’s payments for Iranian energy.

India

India, among Iran’s top five trading partners, has seen its bilateral trade with Iran fall in recent years to around $1.6 billion in the year ending March 2026, according to India’s Department of Commerce, down from $2.3 billion in the year through to March 2023.

New Delhi primarily exports rice, tea, sugar and pharmaceuticals to Iran, and imports dry and fresh fruits from Iran.

In April, India resumed importing crude oil from Iran following a seven-year halt, after the U.S. temporarily lifted sanctions on Iranian crude exports.

But those trades now will be tested if Washington makes good on its threat to sanction any entity, including Indian refiners, that have procured Iranian energy.