The new study, led by Kosuke Namekata of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and formerly a visiting scholar at CU Boulder, also suggests that they can get a lot worse. Note: the Earth is not this close to the sun, this image is for scale purposes only. Image of the Earth to scale with the filament eruption. And they’re potentially bad news: If a coronal mass ejection hit Earth dead on, it could fry satellites in orbit and shut down the power grids serving entire cities. Notsu explained that the sun shoots out these sorts of eruptions on a regular basis-they’re made up of clouds of extremely-hot particles, or plasma, that can hurtle through space at speeds of millions of miles per hour. The study explores a stellar phenomenon called a “coronal mass ejection,” sometimes known as a solar storm. The researchers, including astrophysicist Yuta Notsu of the University of Colorado Boulder, will publish their results today (December 9, 2021) in the journal Nature Astronomy. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight CenterĪstronomers spying on a stellar system located dozens of lightyears from Earth have, for the first time, observed a troubling fireworks show: A star, named EK Draconis, ejected a massive burst of energy and charged particles much more powerful than anything scientists have seen in our own solar system. Coronal mass ejections may help us to understand what happened to the planet over billions of years.This magnificent coronal mass ejection from our sun occured in 2012. “In the past, we think Mars had a much thicker atmosphere. “The atmosphere of present-day Mars is very thin compared to Earth’s,” Notsu concludes. Gigantic coronal mass ejections, in other words, could have helped to shape planets like Earth and Mars into what they look like today. They may have been much more common in the early years of the solar system. The findings, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, hint at our home star also being capable of such violent extremes.ĭespite the dire warning, scientists say super CMEs are probably rarer in older stars. It would not bode well for life on Earth. However, it was enough to confirm the flare was a monster, moving at a top speed of roughly one million miles per hour. The researchers were only able to catch the first step in its life, the “filament eruption” phase. Half an hour later, a CME flew from the star’s surface. On April 5, 2020, they got lucky as EK Draconis erupted into a superflare - a massive one. They scanned it with NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and Japan’s SEIMEI telescopes. Study authors watched the star for 32 nights in winter and spring last year. Known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), stars regularly shoot out clouds of extremely hot particles (plasma) that hurtle through space at tremendous speeds. Researchers say it lies in the constellation of Draco in the far northern sky. The star is named EK Draconis – Latin for dragon – and it is essentially breathing fire. The study suggests that such a solar flare would fry satellites in orbit and crash power grids that serve entire cities - causing widespread blackouts and knocking out phone networks. The team describes that sun’s spectacular fireworks show as “troubling” and warn that a similar event could hit Earth. Researchers from the University of Colorado-Boulder say astronomers spotted a powerful version of this stellar phenomenon for the first time in a star system just 100 light-years away. ( ) - A devastating solar storm could send mankind back to the dark ages, according to new research. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.īOULDER, Colo. This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated.
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