Here comes the sun — with new storms

DENVER — Glowing steadily for more than 4 billion years and rising unfailingly every morning, the sun is something even astronomers can take for granted. Among the 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, ours is rather lackluster.

But the sun certainly is demanding everyone's attention now, three weeks into perhaps the most dramatic and unexpected chain of eruptions ever observed venting from its seething, bubbling surface.

There have been as many as 11 salvos since Oct. 19. And the fireworks could reach a new crescendo by Thanksgiving, the nation's busiest holiday for air travel, just one of the things that can be disrupted.

"There's been nothing quite like this," said Bill Murtagh, a space weather forecaster for the National Oceanic and Space Administration in Boulder, Colo. "Another big blow is not what anyone needs."

NASA scientists compare it to a blizzard in July — in California.

It sounds incredible, but "something like that just happened on the sun," says David Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

The biggest solar storm to affect Earth in the recent cycle was Oct. 28. It caused little damage, largely because it was forecast, and electric utilities and satellite companies took precautions.

Even so, it caused a blackout in Sweden, damaged two Japanese satellites and upset radio communications and navigation systems for jets and ships. Airlines in the northern latitudes flew lower to protect passengers from extra doses of radiation.

It is a startling reminder of who's really in charge of the solar system. Scientists worry that a new round of eruptions could do more of the same or worse.

Each solar burst hurls into space huge clouds of superheated, charged particle clouds that are 13 times the size of Earth. One explosion on Nov. 4 ranks as the most powerful solar flare to be recorded by orbiting instruments — although it was pointed away from Earth.

"This period will go into the history books as one of the most dramatic," said Paal Brekke, deputy project scientist for SOHO, a joint U.S.-European observatory between Earth and the sun.

Early civilizations from the Sumerians to the Aztecs worshipped the sun for its life-nourishing properties. Its furious dynamics weren't discovered until Galileo and others in the 17th century began to directly observe the sun through the first telescopes, sacrificing their eyesight for their discoveries.