Astronomers spot a massive coronal flare on a star other than the Sun for the first time ever

Astronomers have been chasing this mystery for decades: Can stars, other than our Sun, shoot off massive eruptions of plasma that could wipe out nearby planets’ atmospheres? The answer is now a clear yes.

For the first time ever, scientists have caught a coronal mass ejection (CME) exploding off a distant star.

A CME is a huge burst of charged material that can speed through space at millions of miles per hour. We know our Sun throws these out all the time. They’re what cause things like the Northern Lights. But they also mess with satellites and power grids.

This time, though, the coronal flare didn’t come from our Sun. It came from a small, super-active star about 130 light-years away. And if there had been any nearby planets with atmospheres? That blast would’ve stripped them clean.

This isn’t your average star

The star that unleashed this eruption is a red dwarf. Red dwarfs are smaller, cooler, and dimmer than the Sun, but don’t let that fool you – they’re anything but boring.

This one spins 20 times faster than the Sun and has a magnetic field 300 times stronger. That’s like turning up the volume on solar activity to levels we’ve never seen around Earth.

Red dwarfs are the most common stars in our galaxy. Most of the exoplanets we’ve found so far orbit these types of stars.

That’s a big deal, because a lot of the search for life outside our solar system focuses on planets around red dwarfs. But now we know that those stars might not be friendly hosts.

Extrasolar coronal flare

The discovery happened thanks to two high-tech observatories that worked together.

One was the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), a radio telescope that caught a short, intense radio signal – something that only happens when material escapes a star’s magnetic bubble.

“This kind of radio signal just wouldn’t exist unless material had completely left the star’s bubble of powerful magnetism,” said Joe Callingham of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. “In other words: it’s caused by a CME.”

The other key tool was ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope. It measures X-rays from space.

That helped researchers figure out the star’s temperature, rotation, and brightness. Those details confirmed the radio wave was linked to a powerful burst of material.

“We needed the sensitivity and frequency of LOFAR to detect the radio waves,” said David Konijn, a Ph.D. student working with Callingham. “And without XMM-Newton, we wouldn’t have been able to determine the CME’s motion or put it in a solar context.”

Both telescopes were crucial for understanding and proving the coronal flare event. Neither telescope would have been sufficient on its own.

Not just fast – blistering fast

This CME was no slow leak. It shot out at about 1.5 million miles per hour. That’s roughly 2,400 kilometers per second, which scientists say is incredibly rare – even for the Sun. Only about 1 in every 2,000 solar CMEs reaches that kind of speed.

It wasn’t just fast. It was dense, too. That means if a planet had been sitting close to that star, it probably would’ve lost its atmosphere completely. No air. No water. No life.

Finding life with coronal flares

When scientists talk about whether a planet is “habitable,” they’re usually talking about its distance from its star. Not too hot, not too cold – what’s called the “Goldilocks zone.”

But if the star is constantly throwing tantrums and launching massive blasts of charged material, being in the habitable zone doesn’t mean much. You could still end up with a dead rock instead of a thriving world.

“This work opens up a new observational frontier for studying and understanding eruptions and space weather around other stars,” said Henrik Eklund, an ESA research fellow. “We’re no longer limited to extrapolating our understanding of the Sun’s CMEs to other stars.”

In fact, it seems that intense space weather may be even more extreme around smaller stars, which are the primary hosts of potentially habitable exoplanets.

This poses questions about how these planets keep hold of their atmospheres and whether they will remain habitable over time.

Star proves a theory

For years, scientists had suspected that other stars shoot out coronal flares like our Sun. But no one had ever caught one in the act. Until now.

“Previous findings have inferred that they exist, or hinted at their presence, but haven’t actually confirmed that material has definitively escaped out into space,” said Callingham. “We’ve now managed to do this for the first time.”

The discovery also shines a light on how important teamwork is in space science. Without both LOFAR and XMM-Newton, this wouldn’t have been possible.

“XMM-Newton is now helping us discover how CMEs vary by star, something that’s not only interesting in our study of stars and our Sun, but also our hunt for habitable worlds around other stars,” said Erik Kuulkers, ESA XMM-Newton Project Scientist.

“It also demonstrates the immense power of collaboration, which underpins all successful science. The discovery was a true team effort, and resolves the decades-long search for CMEs beyond the Sun,” he added.

Turns out, red dwarfs can be deadly. And now we’ve seen exactly what form the danger can take.

The full study was published in the journal Nature.

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