Hyder Flares

http://wattsupwiththat.com February 24th … has a guest post that will interest members of the SIS. The subject is the Sun and an enormous magnetic filament that stretched more than one million kim from end to end – visible perhaps in amateur telescopes (but be careful with your eyes). For seven days in a row the filament hung suspended above the surface of the Sun. Charles Hyder, in 1964-7 did a doctoral thesis on these flares and has been the acknowledged expert since then. They are now known as Hyder Flares. X Ray waves and radio (microwave) bursts are associated with optical hyder flares but in general they are not associated with particle emissions or geomagnetic storms. Although, the article does give an example, where a large halo CME was observed by the LASCO solar coronograph onboard the SOHO spacecraft that was definitely associated with a Hyder Flare (in 2000). Hyder’s explanation of the flares is that instead of accelerating and ejecting as CMEs they fall down the sides of a magnetic ridge to interact with the lower chromospheric material producing the flare. If they infall in a symetrial fashion a double ribbon flare occurs but if it is asymetrical only one ribbon occurs. If the infall is sporadic it produces bright knots of flares. However, recently the Hyder mechanism has been questioned and is currently unresolved. The bottom line is that at this stage in solar physics we do not really know what produces a flare nor what produces a CME. There are competing theories. In the comments at the end of the article several people raise the subject of the Electric Universe.