Humungous, Record-Breaking Stellar Flare From Sun's Nearest Neighbor

SciTechDaily ^ | 01 May 2021

[zeestephen]

MacGregor and her colleagues observed Proxima Centauri for 40 hours using nine telescopes on the ground and in space. In the process, they got a surprise: Proxima Centauri ejected a flare, or a burst of radiation that begins near the surface of a star, that ranks as one of the most violent seen anywhere in the galaxy..."The star went from normal to 14,000 times brighter when seen in ultraviolet wavelengths over the span of a few seconds," said MacGregor.

[zeestephen]

Proxima Centauri is about 4.25 light years from Earth. It is a red dwarf star with about one-eighth the mass of our sun.

50% to 75% of the exoplanets in the Milky Way are thought to be in systems with a red dwarf star.

Theoretically, this kind of massive flaring on red dwarfs has been predicted before. However, since their normal light is so faint, it is very difficult to study red dwarfs, especially across the entire wavelength of light.

It has been predicted that red dwarfs may eject massive flares as often as several times each day.

Many red dwarfs are in double or triple star systems. It is thought that the powerful gravity of such nearby stars is the cause of massive turbulence inside red dwarfs.

If the theory of hyperactive red dwarfs is correct, this would mean that the probability of life on other planets is very low.

Intense ultraviolet flares like the one that was ejected from Proxima Centauri would eventually destroy the atmosphere and all surface life on any habitable planet.

[Paladin2]

Unexpected AND unprecedented?

[Pez149]

This display was meant to to answer those who believed that there’s life in that star system.
Something on our sun close to this would be catastrophic.

[zeestephen]

Re: Unexpected AND unprecedented?

This was actually the first observation of this phenomenon.

It had been predicted, but there was no verification.

[353FMG]

Perhaps the people in that neighborhood had their “last day” and we witnessed it.

[353FMG]

Perhaps the people in that neighborhood had their “last day” and we witnessed it.

[entropy12]

I better spend all my money before OUR SUN decides to flare out.

[Alas Babylon!]

Isn’t Fauci a Red (Commie) Dwarf?

[hotsteppa]

There goes that theory about the habitability of Proxima Centauri b. Any life there would be sterilized by these flares.

[SuperLuminal]

Hopefully before they had to endure the equivalent of both a obamy & joepedo presidency...

[DannyTN]

Fried Centauri...tastes like chicken

[353FMG]

An obamy & joepedo presidency is only reserved for gullible voters. Anyone halfway intelligent would avoid them. America prided itself to be great and intelligent since 1776 but we showed ourselves to be otherwise.

[Rebelbase]

“stars that are unusually petite and dim.”

There is a lot of that in Hollywood.

[Rebelbase]

Which would have been 4.5 years ago.

[GreenHornet]

Proxima Centauri ejected a flare, or a burst of radiation that begins near the surface of a star, that ranks as one of the most violent seen anywhere in the galaxy..."The star went from normal to 14,000 times brighter when seen in ultraviolet wavelengths over the span of a few seconds," said MacGregor.

Someone on Preoxima Centauri had a gender reveal party that went wrong.

[Jagermonster]

Something on our sun close to this would be catastrophic.

IIRC, red dwarfs are thought to flare because they are not dense enough to contain their convection in layers, generating intense magnetic fields which, when the fields shift, let off Hellish amounts of energy as a flare. Heavier stars like our sun keep convection in layers, and the magnetic fields of the convection are correspondingly smaller, with shifts in the fields producing smaller flares.

Disclaimer, I am not an astrophysicist, nor do I play one on TV.

[Fred Hayek]

I also suspect that frequent flaring of red dwarf stars are due to that the whole star is in convection. Plasma going in a convection loop generates magnetic fields.

[Fred Hayek]

We were both thinking the same thing.

I am not an astrophysicist either, but have done work involving physics.

[Jagermonster]

I’m just a patent attorney with a love for space stuff.

[SunkenCiv]

This topic was posted 5/2/2021, thanks zeestephen.

· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark ·
· post new topic · subscribe ·

Google news searches: exoplanet · exosolar · extrasolar ·

• Proxima Centauri shoots out humongous flare, with big implications for alien life [04/25/2021]
• The First Weather Report From Our Closest Star Is In, And It's Bad News For Life [Proxima Centauri] [12/09/2020]
• An Ultra-Powerful Flare Erupted From Our Nearest Neighbor Star [04/10/2018]
• Proxima Centauri's No Good, Very Bad Day [02/27/2018]