So I was watching this and it occurred to me that the solar flare must be moving unbelievably fast so I tried to figure out roughly how fast...
The flare goes out about 1/6th of the diameter of the Sun which comes to about 144,000 miles in just about a second or so. That is about 18 times the diameter of Earth... in a second. It's close to the speed of light which is I guess what impressed me so much. Solar flares aren't purely energy either as I understand it... yes they are photons and electromagnetic energy but they trigger hydrogen explosions and cast energy as well as matter out into space all at close to the speed of light.
It just impressed me.
