Explosions on the surface of the Sun known as solar flares can have serious consequences on Earth. In the past solar flares have caused power cuts in major cities and last May a flare permanently disabled a $165 million satellite used by 45 million pagers in the US. Now a group of physicists has shown that it might be possible to predict when solar flares will occur by detecting unusual S-shaped patterns called sigmoids - thought to be due to twists in the magnetic field of the Sun - on the solar surface (Geophys. Res. Lett. 26 627).
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