Word: regions
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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 to cover hundreds of thousands of square miles. The monster blotch was an unusually large solar flare, a stupendous explosion that belched radiation...
...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 of lower-energy protons and electrons...
...great flares of March were not isolated events. Nine other major outbursts and hundreds of smaller ones were recorded during the two weeks it took for the sunspot region to rotate out of view. In the months since, as the sun moves erratically toward its maximum, several flares have been observed every...
...telltale seismic-wave patterns also suggest that while the sun's outer layer rotates faster at the equator than at the poles, the inner region rotates uniformly. This creates a shear force, like the blades of scissors sliding past each other, that Harvey suspects distorts the magnetic field, giving rise to the solar cycle...
...asylum seekers who landed in Southeast Asia before governments in the region stopped guaranteeing them refugee status, there was good news: resettlement countries such as the U.S., Canada and Australia agreed to take in 55,000 more escapees. But for those who arrived later, the outlook was bleak. Only the few who can prove that they left to avoid persecution and not just to escape economic privation will be eligible to enter other countries. The rest will be encouraged and perhaps eventually forced to return home. But at the moment, Viet Nam is refusing to take them back...