Massive coronal hole found on sun, it's 20 times larger than Earth: Experts

More on the news: Scientists are carefully monitoring the situation to assess if the winds will impact our planet’s magnetic field and satellites – with the potential for knock-on effects on the internet, mobile phone networks, and GPS. It is also noteworthy to scientists as it has appeared near the sun’s equator. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured holes.

Coronal holes

• Coronal holes are areas of the Sun's corona where the magnetic field is open and allows for the escape of high-speed solar wind particles. 
• Coronal holes are usually harmless, experts say and are usually found near the sun’s poles.
• These areas appear as dark regions in images of the Sun's corona taken in ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths. 
• Coronal holes are characterized by low magnetic field strength and low temperatures compared to the surrounding areas.
• Coronal holes are thought to be related to the Sun's magnetic field and the Sun's 11-year solar cycle, with more coronal holes appearing during times of high solar activity.
• They are cooler, less dense areas of the star and appear during the less active stage of the sun’s 11-year cycle.
• Coronal holes are magnetically open areas that are one source of the high-speed solar wind.
• At times, the solar wind can generate aurora at higher latitudes on Earth. That coronal hole produced auroras far further south than usual, with the skies over Arizona turning an electric purple and green.
• The solar wind particles that escape from coronal holes can impact Earth's magnetic field, causing auroras and other geomagnetic disturbances. Scientists study coronal holes to better understand the Sun's magnetic field and its effects on the space environment around Earth.

SOLAR ENERGETIC PARTICLES (SEP), SOLAR WINDS AND FLARES, AND CORONAL MASS EJECTIONS (CMES)

Solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs)

• CMEs and Solar flares are both explosions that occur on the sun. Sometimes they occur together, but they are not the same thing - they emit different things, they look and travel differently, and they have different effects near planets.
• Both eruptions are created when the motion of the sun’s interior contorts its own magnetic fields. Both originate from corona. 
• Solar flares are giant burst of X-rays and energy which travel at the speed of light in all directions. 
• CME are giant cloud of particles (mostly protons and electrons and powerful magnetic fields) hurled into the space, in particular direction. CMEs take one to three days to reach the earth. Flares only takes eight minutes. 
• Flares and CMEs have different effects at Earth as well. The energy from a flare can disrupt the area of the atmosphere through which radio waves travel. This can lead to degradation and, at worst, temporary blackouts in navigation and communications signals. On the other hand, CMEs can funnel particles into near-Earth space. A CME can jostle Earth’s magnetic fields creating currents that drive particles down toward Earth's poles. When these react with oxygen and nitrogen, they help create the aurora, also known as the Northern and Southern Lights.
• A solar flare is a sudden flash of increased brightness on the Sun, usually observed near its surface and in close proximity to a sunspot group. Powerful flares are often, but not always, accompanied by a coronal mass ejection. 
• Solar flares affect all layers of the solar atmosphere (photosphere, chromosphere, and corona).
• Flares occur in active regions around sunspots, where intense magnetic fields penetrate the photosphere to link the corona to the solar interior.
• Flares are powered by the sudden release of magnetic energy stored in the corona.

Solar winds constantly occur due to the corona of the sun continually expanding. The solar wind is a stream of charged particles consisting of electrons, protons and alpha particles with kinetic energy between 0.5 and 10 keV. The composition of the solar wind plasma also includes a mixture of materials found in the solar plasma: trace amounts of heavy ions and atomic nuclei C, N, O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, and Fe.

Solar energetic particles (SEP) 

• They are high-energy particles coming from the Sun. 
• They were first observed in the early 1940s. 
• They consist of protons, electrons and high-energy nuclei with energy ranging from a few tens of keV to many GeV. 
• They are of particular interest and importance because they can endanger life in outer space (especially particles above 40 MeV). But their onset is extraordinarily hard to predict, in part because we still don’t know exactly where on the Sun they come from.
• The greatest mystery about gradual SEPs is not what speeds them up, but where they come from in the first place. For reasons still not fully understood, SEPs contain a different mix of particles than the other solar material streaming off the Sun in the solar wind – fewer carbon, sulfur, and phosphorous ions, for instance. 
• Many scientists thought Solar Energetic Particles would be found at the edges of the active region where the magnetic field is already open and material can escape directly. But the fingerprint matched only in regions where the magnetic field is still closed.
• The SEPs had somehow broken free from strong magnetic loops connected to the Sun at both ends. These loops trap material near the top of the chromosphere, one layer below where solar flares and coronal mass ejections erupt.