Solar storms can trigger auroras on Earth. This star’s explosion could destroy a planet’s atmosphere
For the first time, astronomers say they have spotted a giant explosion released by a star beyond our solar system. The eruption was similar in some ways to those unleashed by our sun, such as the solar storms that graced the night skies with auroras last week on Earth, but at a much grander — and ominous — scale.
Rather than triggering colorful northern lights, this powerful explosion was more likely to have potentially devastating consequences for any nearby planet, according to new research.
A coronal mass ejection, or a CME, was the likely cause of the explosive event. In our solar system, this phenomenon is a large cloud of ionized gas, called plasma, and magnetic fields that erupts from the sun’s outer atmosphere.
When such outbursts are large enough to reach Earth, they can cause space weather, or major disturbances of our planet’s magnetic field.
These powerful solar storms create auroras at Earth’s poles but can also disrupt communications, the power grid and satellite operations.
Astronomers have never been able to detect a coronal mass ejection releasing from another star — until now. Researchers described the groundbreaking finding in a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature .
unknown content item
-
The star, named StKM 1-1262, is a red dwarf star about 130 light-years from Earth.
The stellar storm launched at a blazing 5.3 million miles per hour (2,400 kilometers per second). Such speed has only been clocked in about 1 in every 2,000 coronal mass ejections released from our sun, according to the study authors.
“The star behaves like an extremely magnetized, boiling bucket of plasma. This burst is 10 to 100 thousand times more powerful than the strongest the sun can produce,” study coauthor Cyril Tasse, research associate at the Paris Observatory, said via email. “This opens a window of extrasolar space weather.”
The dense, rapid burst of material hurled from the star was powerful enough that it could strip away the atmosphere of a closely orbiting planet.
Understanding how the violent activity of stars affects exoplanets is crucial as astronomers seek to determine whether any planet beyond our solar system is potentially habitable for life.
