The Sun has just fired off its most powerful solar flare of 2025, causing radio blackouts across half the globe. As the barrage of charged particles makes its way toward Earth, the aurorae borealis – or Northern Lights – could become visible at unusually low latitudes tonight. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

Solar flares are bursts of electromagnetic radiation that arise from tangles in the Sun’s magnetic field, and travel through space at the speed of light. The strongest of these are categorized as X-flares , three of which have now been recorded in the past few days.

The first two were detected on November 9 and 10, and ranked as X1.7 and X1.2, respectively. Both of these flares arose from an active sunspot called

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