{"id":20152,"date":"2025-07-17T11:54:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T06:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=20152"},"modified":"2025-07-17T13:19:41","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T07:49:41","slug":"what-are-coronal-mass-ejections-cmes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/what-are-coronal-mass-ejections-cmes\/","title":{"rendered":"Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs)"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Coronal Mass Ejections Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Astronomers have unveiled the intricate tale behind a series of powerful solar eruptions called Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), that resulted in rare northern lights dancing across Ladakh&#8217;s night skies in May 2024.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Coronal Mass Ejections<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul style=\"list-style-type: disc;\">\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These are massive ejections of <\/span><b>magnetized plasma from the Sun\u2019s corona<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><b>How are Coronal Mass Ejections formed?<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They form <\/span><b>similarly to solar flares<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2014a result of the twisting and realignment of the sun\u2019s magnetic field, known as magnetic reconnection.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When magnetic field lines \u201ctangle\u201d they produce <\/span><b>strong localized magnetic fields<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> which can break through the surface of the sun at active regions, subsequently generating CMEs.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">CMEs usually take <\/span><b>place around sunspot groups<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and are often accompanied by a solar flare, though the two don\u2019t always occur in tandem.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">CMEs travel outward from the sun at speeds ranging from slower than 250 kilometers per second (km\/s) to as <\/span><b>fast as 3000 km\/s.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The fastest <\/span><b>Earth-directed CMEs<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> can reach our planet in as little as 15-18 hours.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They <\/span><b>expand in size as they propagate away from the Sun<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and larger CMEs can reach a size comprising nearly a quarter of the space between Earth and the Sun by the time they reach our planet.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">CMEs, like solar flares, are most common during the solar maximum, a period in the sun\u2019s 11-year cycle of activity when the star is at its most active.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Impact on Earth:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> When such solar blasts are directed toward the Earth, they can <\/span><b>cause geomagnetic storms capable <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of disrupting <\/span><b>satellite operations, communication systems<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and power grids.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Source:<\/b> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pib.gov.in\/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2145168\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">PIB<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Coronal Mass Ejections are large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the sun&#8217;s atmosphere\u2014the corona, that propagate outward into interplanetary space. Read more about Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), Meaning, Formation, Impacts, Latest News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":55362,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1610,1609],"class_list":{"0":"post-20152","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-coronal-mass-ejections","9":"tag-tadoba-andhari-tiger-reserve","10":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}