Scientists find strange changes on sun hours before a powerful X9 solar flare: 'I was not expecting what I found'

Scientists may have finally seen the sun telegraph an eruption hours before it happened — and the one caught was one of our star's most powerful explosions. Drawing on a rare dataset collected in the hours leading up to a massive solar flare , scientists identified a series of changes in the sun 's atmosphere that offer new clues about how major eruptions begin. Eventually, these results could help improve space weather forecasting. …