• Question: how hot is a solar flair

    Asked by chrisofwhitburn to Rory on 18 Jun 2014.
    • Photo: Rory Hadden

      Rory Hadden answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      Thats a brilliant question. They are VERY VERY VEY hot. I searched on google and found that they can be between 10 and 100 million degrees Celcius. Thats something like 100 000 000 degrees Celcius. To put that in context, water boils at 100 degrees C and temperatures in a fire are around 1000 degrees C. Solar flares are MUCH MUCH hotter than that!

      These are not fire in the same way as a bonfire or a candle. Those are chemical reactions a solar flare is actually a nuclear reaction. This means that the physics are totally different and not likely to happen on earth (unless we manage to harness nuclear fusion for electricity generation – you can read more about that here http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion).

      Rory

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