Solar flares 10,000 times stronger than any ever observed on our sun can be released by stars similar to ours, according to new research.
Just one solar flare of that magnitude would greatly damage the ozone layer, and cause mass extinctions.
The research was done by using NASA’s Kepler Probe to monitor 83,000 sunlike stars for 4 months. Out of that, 148 of the stars released a total of 365 solar flares.
Most of the stars producing the largest flares were also the fastest moving, though some spinning at slower speeds, like our sun, produced large ones.
The largest flares were coming mostly from stars that appeared to have massive sunspots, larger than any ever observed on our sun.
“Most superflare stars have large starspots, but the present sun does not,” Hiroyuki Maehara, an astronomer at Kyoto University, and the lead author of the paper, is quoted as saying. “Further studies are necessary to understand why and how such large starspots are formed on solar-type stars, and whether our sun can produce superflares.”
Source: Nature
Image Credits: NASA
