4 solar flares erupt in exceptionally rare, "quadruple" solar flare from the sun in rare 'super' explosion [View all]

4 solar flares simultaneously erupt from the sun in rare 'super' explosion — and Earth could be hit by the fallout.

Live Science

An exceptionally rare, "quadruple" solar flare just exploded from four different points across the sun's surface at almost the exact same time. The components of this interconnected, explosive tetrad may have also launched a solar storm toward Earth — which could potentially slam into our planet in the coming days.

The four-part eruption began at around 1:00 a.m. EDT on Tuesday (April 23), according to video footage captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. The near-simultaneous outbursts came from three sunspots and a large magnetic filament — a large loop of plasma suspended above the solar surface — located in between those three dark patches, Spaceweather.com reported. The blast sites were each separated by hundreds of thousands of miles, and the area between them covered around a third of the solar surface facing Earth.

The concurrent blasts were part of one single eruption, known as a sympathetic solar flare. This type of solar outburst happens when sunspots or filaments are invisibly linked by massive magnetic field loops that arch above the solar surface. When one detonates, the others quickly follow suit.