Every month, a couple of times an explosion, sometimes more and sometimes less, goes off on the Sun’s surface, emitting energy equivalent to millions of hydrogen bombs.

The huge energy emission can’t explain how material spitted out by such explosions gets ramped up to roughly light’s speed. This seems like thinking of a golf cart motor to power a Ferrari.

In a latest study, researchers have provided a first-of-its-kind look underneath the cover of such solar eruptions, taking particular aim at the physical process that quickens the superfast particles.

At present, there are 18 NASA space missions devoted o studying our closest star and its impact on the solar system. A few of these satellites look directly into the sun nearly nonstop, providing a 24/7 stream of pictures of the swirling, churning surface of the sun.

At the time of occurrence of a solar eruption, these satellites also witness the incredibly bright light flashes that are known as solar flares. The eruptions also seldom hurl a cloud of very hot and electrically charged gas known as plasma, out into space. The expelled plasma is known as a coronal mass ejection or CME.

As per the US space agency a solar explosion emits nearly the same amount of energy that would be released from ‘millions of 100-megaton hydrogen bombs’. One hundred megatons are equivalent to one hundred million metric tons of TNT.

It is quite difficult to imagine something quite massive. The apt way of understanding the colossal nature of such events might be to consider a picture captured by NASA, showing a particularly huge CME.

As per a footage from NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center, CMEs travel at about 1 million miles per hour. However, a solar astrophysicist at Goddard, C Alex Young said that one of the most energetic CMEs ever captured had particles clocked at more than 7 million mph.