A gigantic cluster of sunspots — collectively around the same size as the one that birthed the largest solar storm in recorded history — has just emerged on the sun’s Earth-facing side, and is now pointed directly at our planet. But don’t panic! While auroras and some technological disturbances are possible over the coming week, the new sunspot complex seems unlikely to unleash a second Carrington Event.
The complex, dubbed AR 4294-4296, is made up of two different sunspot groups, AR 4294, and AR 4296, that are magnetically intertwined. It first became visible on Nov. 28, when it rotated onto the sun’s Earth-facing side on our home star’s western limb. However, the dark patches were first spotted around a week earlier by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, which was spying on the sun’s far side relative to Earth.
AR 4294-4296 is around the same size as a giant sunspot observed by British astronomer Richard Carrington in September 1859, which subsequently birthed the “Carrington Event” — the biggest solar storm ever seen by humans. The image above, first shared by Spaceweather.com on Dec. 2, shows the sunspot complex alongside Carrington’s sketch of the giant 19th-century behemoth. At first glance, the new sunspot complex appears to be larger. However, in reality, its dark spots cover an area of the solar surface around 90% the size of the Carrington sunspot.
Sunspots have the capacity to unleash powerful blasts of radiation, or solar flares, when their invisible magnetic field lines contort and snap, unleashing energy into space. These explosive outbursts can trigger temporary radio blackouts on Earth and launch massive, fast-moving clouds of plasma, or coronal mass ejections (CMEs), at our planet. When this happens, it can subsequently cause disturbances in our planet’s magnetic field, known as geomagnetic storms, which can interfere with electronics and paint vibrant auroras in the night sky.
The new dark patches are “one of the biggest sunspot groups of the past 10 years” and have the capacity to unleash supercharged X-class flares — the most powerful type on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s solar flare categorization system — Spaceweather.com representatives recently wrote. If it does blow and unleashes a CME, then the resulting solar storm “will be geoeffective,” they added.
The Carrington Event unleashed an estimated X45 magnitude solar flare in 1859, which remains a record, although there is geological evidence that even more powerful blasts occurred long before humans emerged. For context, an X45 flare is more than five times stronger than the most powerful solar flare of the last decade — an X7 blast in October 2024.
If an equally powerful blast impacted Earth today, the radiation would knock out every satellite in orbit around our planet, recent simulations revealed. It would also wreak havoc on the ground, potentially damaging parts of the electrical grid. Experts estimate that the total damages would easily exceed $1 trillion.
If AR 4294-4296 is close in size to the sunspot that birthed the Carrington Event, that means a huge solar storm is likely, right? Well, yes and no.
Larger sunspots do have the potential to launch more powerful solar flares. For example, the sunspot that birthed a geomagnetic “superstorm” in May 2024 was more than 15 times wider than Earth. However, with sunspots, size isn’t everything.
Whether or not a sunspot reaches its maximum explosive potential is also tied to the configuration of its magnetic field and the frequency with which it explodes, meaning that some giant sunspots can be completely harmless.
The magnetic fields of AR 4294-4296 are quite entangled, meaning that flares are possible, and the complex has already unleashed a potential X-class flare while still on the sun’s farside, according to Spaceweather.com. However, despite this, experts say there is no clear sign of a superstorm on par with the Carrington Event in the immediate future.
Scientists will be keeping a particularly close eye on the magnetic field of the latest behemoth for signs of incoming activity. But if it happens to rotate past Earth without any outbursts, the hefty dark spots are likely large enough to survive more than one trip around the sun, meaning they could be back for “round two” sometime closer to Christmas.
The sun has been particularly active in recent years, because it has recently been in the most active phase of its roughly 11-year solar cycle, known as solar maximum.
That has fueled several recent X-class flares, including two back-to-back explosions, which triggered a G4 (severe) geomagnetic storm between Nov. 11-12. In fact, 2024 had the highest number of X-class flares in a single year since modern records began in 1996.
A lot of these flares have triggered geomagnetic storms on Earth, including the extreme disturbance in May 2024, which was the most powerful of its kind for 21 years and triggered some of the most widespread auroras in centuries.
