Question about solar flares

[nikolai_42]

With the recent increase in activity in the sun, there have been several articles on X-class solar flares. I'm no astronomer and I know enough physics to get by, but this is nowhere near my area of expertise. To the articles.

This is the last one I saw in my travels :

Solar Flares - Is the Sun Trying to Tell us Something?

And in some of the earlier activity, I noticed several articles such as this one :

Flare Expected to Reach Earth Tomorrow

The thing that I haven't been able to figure out is why there is such a big difference in the speeds with which these flares reach earth. The recent article (first one) says that there were already radio blackouts because of it (same day). And I read more than one article that indicated the same thing. The second article was written on Thursday September 11 and indicated that the flare was ejected on Wednesday (Sept 10th) and was expected to reach earth on Friday and Saturday. So it seems that there is travel time of a few hours to a few days (i.e. roughly 20x difference).

Do these flares really "travel" at such varying speeds? Why? I would have expected that X class flares would travel with roughly the same speed since they are so powerful (and, I would guess - just a guess, mind you - that they are ejected with great force).

Whence the discrepancy?

 

[Truster]

With the recent increase in activity in the sun, there have been several articles on X-class solar flares. I'm no astronomer and I know enough physics to get by, but this is nowhere near my area of expertise. To the articles.

This is the last one I saw in my travels :

Solar Flares - Is the Sun Trying to Tell us Something?

And in some of the earlier activity, I noticed several articles such as this one :

Flare Expected to Reach Earth Tomorrow

The thing that I haven't been able to figure out is why there is such a big difference in the speeds with which these flares reach earth. The recent article (first one) says that there were already radio blackouts because of it (same day). And I read more than one article that indicated the same thing. The second article was written on Thursday September 11 and indicated that the flare was ejected on Wednesday (Sept 10th) and was expected to reach earth on Friday and Saturday. So it seems that there is travel time of a few hours to a few days (i.e. roughly 20x difference).

Do these flares really "travel" at such varying speeds? Why? I would have expected that X class flares would travel with roughly the same speed since they are so powerful (and, I would guess - just a guess, mind you - that they are ejected with great force).

Whence the discrepancy?

The solar flares from the equator of the sun travels faster than the flares from the poles.

 

[RevTestament]

Most of the bad flares "miss" us just because they are pointed in another direction. Some really bad ones earlier this year were pointed at Mars, wherever it was at the time. If it had been pointed at earth, it probably could have caused blackouts or worse. If we are to the side of the flare which is usually the case, we just get a peripheral effect and the peak of it is later than the peak is when the flare happens to be pointing at us. The ejected material does travel at a slower speed to the sides. Imagine a balloon popping up out of the water.