The Biggest Explosions in the Solar System

Jul 21st 2010, 00:15

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Description

June 12, 2001 -- Astronauts love space walks. Floating
weightless hundreds of kilometers above Earth, the terrain
below racing by at 17,000 mph --no space traveler wants it
to end. But it only takes two words to send one of those
brave explorers racing back to their craft: "Solar flare!"
"Solar flares are the biggest explosions in the solar
system," says Robert Lin of UC Berkeley's Space Science
Lab. "They erupt near sunspots with the force of a hundred
million hydrogen bombs." Astronauts caught spacewalking
during a solar flare or one of their cousins, a coronal mass
ejection, can absorb a radiation dose equivalent to 100
chest x-rays -- reason enough to dash for shelter.
Above: Astronaut Steven Smith floats above Earth during
shuttle mission STS-103. [more]