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

Tinder Users Must Start Logging In With Their Faces, Starting Nationwide

The social app now has new US requirements including face identification to help quell longstanding problems with catfishing and more.

US Tinder users will find a new feature when they open up the dating app starting Wednesday: A mandatory Face Check on their phones will be required before they can log into their profiles.

The Face Check step will begin with a new request to record a video of your face, a more casual version of setting up Apple’s Face ID login. Tinder will then run checks comparing your face data to your current profile pics and automatically create a small face badge for your profile. We already know how it works, because Tinder has already launched the feature in Canada and California before the full US rollout.

The technology, powered by FaceTec, will keep biometric data of the user’s face in encrypted form but discard the scanning video for privacy. Tinder will be able to use the face data to detect duplicate accounts, in an effort to cut down on fake profiles and identity theft.

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Tinder’s facial recognition rollout is also made to prevent catfishing, or people pretending to be someone else on Tinder to scam or blackmail them. But that also points to a deeper problem on the rise in dating apps — a growing number of bots, many controlled by AI, are designed to glean personal information or fool users into scammy subscriptions, among other problems.

Tinder’s working against these bots on several fronts, including this Face Check push as well as ID Check, which requires a government-issued ID and other types of photo verification.

The dating app also recently released a feature in June to enable double-dating with your friends, which Tinder reports is especially popular with Gen Z users. If you’re worried about the latest hazards on Tinder, we have guide to safety practices.

A representative for Tinder did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Thursday, Oct. 23

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Oct. 23.

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

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Like some weather, memories and I.P.A.s
Answer: HAZY

5A clue: Statement that’s self-evidently true
Answer: AXIOM

7A clue: Civic automaker
Answer: HONDA

8A clue: What fear leads to, as Yoda told a young Anakin
Answer: ANGER

9A clue: Foxlike
Answer: SLY

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Verbal «lol»
Answer: HAHA

2D clue: Brain signal transmitter
Answer: AXON

3D clue: Hits with a witty comeback
Answer: ZINGS

4D clue: Sing at the top of a mountain, maybe
Answer: YODEL

6D clue: Name of the famous «Queen of Scots»
Answer: MARY

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Oct. 23 #599

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Oct. 23, No. 599.

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 might be Halloween-themed, as the answers are all rather dangerous. Some of them are a bit tough 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: Please don’t eat me!

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Remember Mr. Yuk?

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:

POND, NOON, NODE, BALE, SOCK, LOVE, LOCK, MOCK, LEER, REEL, GLOVE, DAIS, LEAN, LEAD, REEL

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: