108 million degrees! Solar flares are far hotter than thought, study suggests

Our sun's fiery flares are even more extreme than scientists had thought, blasting particles to temperatures six times hotter than earlier estimates, according to new research.

Solar flares are colossal explosions in the sun's atmosphere that hurl out bursts of powerful radiation. These events are notorious for disrupting satellites, scrambling radio signals and potentially posing dangers to astronauts in space.

Now, a team led by Alexander Russell of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland reports that particles in the sun's atmosphere heated up by flares can reach a staggering 60 million degrees Celsius (108 million degrees Fahrenheit) — tens of millions higher than earlier predictions, which typically put such temperatures between 10 million and 40 million degrees Celsius (18 millio