Sun blasts out three flares in 24 hours
Solar flare bonanza! The sun has emitted the third significant solar flare within 24 hours, the strongest X-class flare this year so far.
The flare, classified as an X3.2 flare, surpassed in strength the two flares that occurred earlier in the 24-hour period. The flare was also associated with a coronal mass ejection, or CME. However, CME was not Earth-directed.
Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however when intense enough, they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.
Experimental Nasa research models show that the CME left the Sun at approximately 2,253 km per second, which is particularly fast for a CME. The models suggest that it will catch up to the two CMEs associated with the earlier flares. The merged cloud of solar material will pass by the Spitzer spacecraft and may give a glancing blow to the STEREO-B and Epoxi spacecraft.
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Records fall at new york art auction
New York: A painting by Barnett Newman that Sotheby’s described as an icon of “Abstract Expressionism” sold on Tuesday in New York for a record $43.84 million at an auction peppered with stunningly expensive works.
Onement VI consists of two vibrant blue rectangles neatly divided by a single, light blue line, an arrangement that Sotheby’s called “a portal to the sublime.”
The simplicity of the design “was the core of Newman’s ambition to create paintings free of objects, dogma, precedence or referential subject matter,” Sotheby’s said.
“Along with other heroic artists of the Twentieth Century, Newman wanted to regenerate art and society through the invention of new forms of expression that could capture the ineffable essence of existence.”
Estimated at $30 million to $40 million, Onement VI led the charge at an uneven spring auction. — AFP
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