Sunspots are the main sources for solar flares — brief pulses of intense radiation created when the Sun’s magnetic loops spontaneously snap
and rearrange themselves. Sometimes, a spate of
solar flares will spur an even more violent phenomenon, a billion-ton belch of magnetized plasma that explodes out from our star at millions of miles per hour, plowing into anything in its path. Scientists call these solar belches "coronal mass ejections," or CMEs.