As human life depends on a stable Sun, astrophysicists like to think they understand the basics of solar behavior. So, when the Sun does something they've never seen before, they scramble to explain it.
Such an event happened June 7, when a moderate solar flare coupled with a huge coronal mass ejection. Scientists don't know yet if the two occurrences are somehow physically linked. The CME was also a bit odd. Usually, the mass ejected in such an event is in fact ejected-- blown out into the Solar System. This time, however, a big part of the mass ejected from the Sun actually fell back into the Sun. Scientists don't know yet why that happened, either, but they'll probably be working on it for years.
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