Cfredit: Everyscope
Posted on 04/10/2018 3:24:28 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the sun, recently burst forth with one of the most powerful flares ever seen for a star its size. The small red dwarf is generally invisible to the human eye, but this flare may have lit it up bright enough for some naked eye observers to see the event—at least under the right conditions, according to Alison Youngblood, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
According to the team's findings, the star brightened by a factor of 68 during the "superflare," unleashing 316,227,766,000 petajoules (316,227 petawatts) of energy.
Proxima Centauri is just 4.2 light years away, but it's a member of the smallest class of normal stars called red dwarfs, which only emit faint visible light. As such, it sits at magnitude 11—whereas the human eye can see magnitudes up to 6 or 7. (A low magnitude number indicates a high brightness, and some solar system objects are bright enough to dip into negative numbers on the scale.) The flare event placed the star at magnitude 6.8, which would have been as bright as a dim star on a clear, very dark night.
When the flare originally took place two years ago it was detected by the Evryscope, a nightly sky survey telescope that connects 24 consumer-grade camera lenses to look for transient events and transiting planets. The flare was 10 times more powerful than any ever witnessed from Proxima Centauri, which is already known for its quite volatile nature.
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
So that’s why I haven’t heard from my Centauri pen pal in a couple of years.
” 316,227,766,000 petajoules (316,227 petawatts)”
This makes no sense.
Anyone have any idea what it means?
316,227 petawatts for a million seconds?
These types of red dwarf flares normally last only a few minutes. The peak brilliance quoted (x68) probably lasted less than 30 seconds.
I have no idea.
But still more than enough time to fry any life on a planet orbiting it in the habitability zone
We’ll need to blow up Proxima Centauri BEFORE we start our colony in that system.
Perhaps by then we’ll have the technology to make useful stuff up out of a blowed-up star?
Man, we’ll need a poop-ton of dynomite!
Watts you talkin about, Willis?
A single petawatt is 1,000,000,000,000,000 (a quadrillion) watts. Compared to a blowdryer, or a microwave, at about 1,000 watts. You wouldn't want to get too close.
This is why it’s useless to search for livable planets around red dwarfs.....too many flares that will fry anything in the Goldilocks zone.
A “MAIN EVENT”, like Kohoutek.
Now, watt-SECONDS and joules, those are the same.
316,227,766,000 petajoules != 316,227 petawatt-seconds, though. Not by a long shot.
Yeah, something does not compute.
A joule is a watt-second.
You can not convert between joules and watts (peta or not) unless there is some unstated time factor involved.
You at correct. Apparently, my Newton Meter was turned off.
Old news. Happened four years ago! ;^)
These sorts of flares are much hotter that the photosphere - around 10,000 to 20,000 kelvin, hence they (briefly) produce large amounts of UV. Enough to stimulate the production of an ozone layer in an oxygen rich atmosphere.
By comparison, the photosphere for a red dwarf is somewhere around the 2500-3200 Kelvin range. Energy radiated per unit area is proportional to the temperature to the fourth power, according to the Stefan-Boltzmann equation.
How would the oxygen get there?
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