Massive (sic?) solar flare

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From: Bill Taylor (bt4_1284@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Oct 28 2003 - 17:22:14 PST 

Message-ID: <20031029012214.5753.qmail@web40412.mail.yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 17:22:14 -0800 (PST)
From: Bill Taylor <bt4_1284@yahoo.com>
Subject: Massive (sic?) solar flare

MASSIVE SOLAR FLARE ERUPTS ON THE SUN
-------------------------------------
The third most powerful solar flare ever recorded erupted from the Sun
earlier today, and scientists say Earth could feel the effects with
communications disruptions and loss of power.

    http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0310/28flare/

"This is the real thing," says John Kohl, a solar astrophysicist at the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and principal
investigator for the Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer on board NASA's
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft.

"The eruption was positioned perfectly. It's headed straight for us like a
freight train, so a major geomagnetic storm is bound to happen when it
reaches us on October 29th or 30th."

My (novice) question is: WHAT IS IT actually, that is headed towards
Earth? Ripples in the ether? Alien beings? Stream of electrons (isn't
that the solar wind anyway?) Changes in the solar wind, which change
would create magnetic storms a la Faraday's Law? Can someone give us a
physics explanation?

=====
Bill Taylor
Drew High School
San Francisco
415 661 9667

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