• Question: What is the biggest explosion that could be caused by the sun?

    Asked by anon-219940 to Emma on 21 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Emma Davies

      Emma Davies answered on 21 Jun 2019:

      I’m actually not sure! The biggest explosion we’ve ever seen hit the Earth was called the Carrington Event, and this happened in 1859. It was so big that it caused the aurora (Northern Lights) to be seen as far south as Cuba and Hawaii! And it also caused such a power surge that telegraph poles set on fire!
      I’m sure it’s possible for the Sun to make even bigger explosions, but I think they’d be so rare that we might not see them in our lifetime! We predict that we’d see a very big explosion like the Carrington Event about every 100 years, so one even bigger might be every 1000 years or so!

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