Researchers had previously linked sunquakes to solar flares. On February 15, 2011, researchers spied two sunquakes and a solar flare that occurred around the same time—but the flare wasn't hot enough to have spawned the seismic waves.
Imagine forecasting a hurricane in Miami weeks before the storm was even a swirl of clouds off the coast of Africa—or predicting a tornado in Kansas from the flutter of a 蝴蝶 in Texas. Physics may have achieved the astronomical equivalent.
Scientists have found a way to spot active regions of the sun, below the solar surface, a full 日 或者 two before they erupt as sunspots on our nearest star, researchers said.