Could a massive solar flare light up the Moon and Jupiter, but still not destroy the Earth?

Anything is possible. If the flare happened on the side of the Sun directly facing the Earth some type of brightning could happen, but a few days later, the plasma cloud would propagate past the orbit of the Earth and take several days to clear out. We would see spectacular aurora everywhere on Earth, even the Equator, but as for any impact to the biosphere, I would think there wouldn't be much to worry about. I would stay indoors and wear lead shorts just to make certain. These types of flares are probably not very common on G-type stars, but on M-type dwarfs called 'flare stars' they can outshine the star by over 1000 times!


Copyright 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald
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