The sun’s solar flare activity appears to be hotting up: a massive X-Class solar flare erupted early on Sunday (Oct. 19) from a huge sunspot, and astronomers fear that this could just be the beginning of a spate of sizeable flares.

Solar flares are explosions of energetic radiation that can have potentially devastating effects on our communication systems, causing radio blackouts and affecting satellite measurements. Flares are categorised into three types, with grade C being the least powerful, grade M a medium-level flare, and grade X being the most powerful of all. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft captured images of the latest huge flare which was classified as a formidable X1.1.
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A poll led by the Pew Global Attitudes Project has canvassed more than 48,000 people from all different cultures, religions and nationalities to discover what they believe to be the greatest current threats facing humanity in the 21st century.

People from 44 different countries were given a list of potential threats and asked to name which of these constituted their greatest fears for the human race, answering the question:

"Which one of these poses the greatest threat to the world?"
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As San Francisco commemorates the 25th anniversary of its last serious quake this week, a new report has warned that the city could once again be sitting on top of a ticking seismic time bomb.

Scientists tracking the movements of four highly stressed seismic faults that form part of the Bay Area’s densely populated San Andreas system have discovered worrying surface mobility which suggests that they could burst forth in a major quake at any time.
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There can be no doubt that the variety of information available on the internet is incredibly wide and varied, and limited only by the imagination of its users. As with all aspects of life, this diversity of subject matter encompasses all extremes, from the lightest and most positive to the darkest and most vile of pursuits, and all shades of grey in between.
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