Solar flare biggest ever recorded

[Gwarsbane]

anonymity,Oct 26 2003, 10:44 PM] well it would have been much simplier, if Florida wasnt part of the planet.

I'd like to post 2 questions here
1) how long have we had the equipment to measure these flares or CME's?
2) how long has the sun been doing this?

Chances are the sun has been giveing off more magnetic flares then this storm here, we just havent recorded them.

1) About 20 to 30 years (maybe longer), thou only the last 10 years I believe we have been able to get good views of them and better warnings.

2) For all we know, as long as the sun has been around... or only in the last 100 years. either could be true we don't know for sure.

Chances are the sun has been doing this since the beggining and we have just dodged bullets over all these years after all our orbit of the sun is pretty big and there is alot of empty space to miss us with. Not only just round in an orbit, but off in any direction. For all we know massive ones could be going off on the back of the sun. We can't watch back there. The sun does rotate every 28 days thou.