Word: marched
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Some 93 million miles away, the sun was, at the very least, agitated. In early March, an area of sunspots large enough to contain 70 earth-size planets had come into view around the eastern rim* of the glowing orb. Created by intense magnetic fields and cooler than the surrounding gases, the sunspots were visible as dark blemishes on the fiery surface. Just as astronomers were turning their attention to the mottled region, a bright spot suddenly appeared in its midst. It spread like a prairie wildfire, glowing white hot on the sun's yellow face and quickly expanding...
...astronomer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. So fast, in fact, that astronomers are betting on 1990 or perhaps even later this year, instead of 1991, as the beginning of the maximum. And what a maximum it could be. Despite the ferocity of the March flares, Moore warns, "this cycle is still in its early phase. It's got quite a way to go." Solar buffs are speculating it might approach the violence reached by the 1957-58 maximum, which touched off five disruptive geomagnetic superstorms and vivid auroral displays. Says astronomer Donald Neidig...
While the recent flares did not measure up to the March conflagration, astronomers were jubilant. "We have been exceptionally lucky," says Alan Kiplinger, a solar physicist at the University of Colorado. "It's unusual to have the sun cooperate...
Fortunately for earth dwellers, the March flare occurred on the easternmost edge of the sun and thus aimed its full force away from the earth. But on March 10, when the sun's stately rotation brought the turbulent group of sunspots to a position more directly facing the earth, a second, only slightly less powerful flare erupted in the region. Eight minutes later, traveling at the speed of light, a blast of X ray and ultraviolet radiation seared the earth's upper atmosphere. Within an hour, high-energy protons began to arrive, followed in three days by a massive bombardment...
...last week seemed to symbolize the fears critics have long expressed about the Strategic Defense Initiative. What fizzled was not the payload -- a satellite designed to generate Buck Rogers-style neutral-particle beams in space -- but a thoroughly conventional solid-fuel Aries booster. Coming after an aborted mission in March using a Delta launcher, the unsuccessful mission crystallized suspicion that SDI is so riddled with potential failures that it will never get off the ground...