Superflares erupt from Sun-like stars about every 100 years, according to a new study. Is our Sun overdue for a massive explosion?

Our solar system could be subject to a violent explosion from our sun sooner rather than later, researchers warn, based on a new analysis of the behavior of similar stars.

Stars, including our sun, regularly emit solar flares, or strong bursts of electromagnetic radiation. Superflares, however, are much more powerful than typical solar flares, emitting up to 10,000 times more radiation. And across the cosmos, these events could occur much more frequently than astronomers previously thought, according to a paper published in Science last week.

The new results indicate that stars resembling our Sun experience superflares about once a century – and if this is true, it seems our Sun may be too late for such an explosion. Since solar activity is already known to cause damage to Earth’s satellite and telecommunications systems, this discovery came as a shock to the team.

“It’s 40 to 50 times more common than previously thought,” says Valeriy Vasilyev, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany and co-author of the paper. Espace.comIt’s Robert Léa. “Everything about this discovery was surprising.”

What an explosion! #Sun-similar stars produce a #superflare on average about once per century per star, a research team led by #MPSGoettingen shows in today’s issue of @sciencemagazine. More here: @UniGraz @UniOulu @prcnaoj_en @CUBoulder @unipariscite pic.twitter.com/31n8y6aczT

– Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (@MPSGoettingen) December 13, 2024

Because superflares are relatively rare, Vasiliev and his team extracted data from 56,450 stars that share many characteristics with our sun. The data, previously collected by NASA’s Kepler space telescope between 2009 and 2013, gave them access to “evidence of 220,000 years of stellar activity”, explains Alexander Shapiro, co-author of the study, in a press release. and astrophysicist at the Austrian University of Graz.

From this data, they identified 2,889 occurrences of superflares across 2,527 stars, leading them to conclude that a Sun-like star produces approximately one superflare every 100 years or so. Generally, stars of the same size and temperature share the same evolutionary life cycles, writes Korey Haynes for Astronomy review. As such, the overall behavior of these stars could serve as a predictor of the behavior of our sun.

This is why astronomers are paying special attention to this new discovery. In particular, they hope that by better understanding when such events can occur, we can better prepare for the damage that could result. For example, the Carrington Event of 1859, the strongest solar storm on record, ravaged telegraph networks around the world. But the energy released in this eruption is only one-hundredth of the energy thought to be associated with a super-eruption, the researchers say.

Still, scientists point out a few reasons why super-rashes might not be a big cause for concern. On other stars, these powerful explosions tend to occur near the poles, Espace.com reports, so such flares from our sun could miss Earth entirely. Plus, the stars examined might not be perfect analogues of our sun, some scientists say – and 30% of the stars observed emitting superflares in the new study are in pairs known as binary systems, note Live ScienceIt’s Ben Turner. Perhaps tidal interactions between these stars, which would not apply to our sun, trigger some of their flares.

Ultimately, we don’t know for sure whether our sun is capable of expelling a superflare, Vasilyev explains to the newspaper. New York Times” Katrina Miller. But “it’s good to be prepared,” he adds.

Solar flares are also associated with coronal mass ejections, or clouds of plasma and magnetic fields launched from the sun, which cause geomagnetic storms on Earth. “A geomagnetic storm occurs when Earth’s protective magnetic shield is pushed away or eroded by the solar wind,” says Martin Connors, an astronomer at Athabasca University in Canada who was not involved in the study. News weekThis is Jess Thomson. Such storms would overload the northern and southern lights and could damage power grids and satellites, he said.

Coronal mass ejections leave a geological record on Earth: an elevated level of a radioactive isotope of carbon that appears in tree rings and ice cores. By searching for these signatures, scientists identified five extreme solar storms originating from our sun, the most devastating dating to 775 CE, according to the release. But it remains unclear whether such events are due to multiple flares rather than a single, powerful one — and Earth’s records don’t reveal whether the Sun has launched superflares that didn’t collide with our planet .

Regardless, scientists involved in the study emphasize the need for caution. MPS astronomer Natalie Krivova said in the release that “the new data are a stark reminder that even the most extreme solar events are part of the sun’s natural repertoire.”

With this in mind, the team’s next step is to redirect their research to confirm how superflares could potentially affect Earth.

“We are following several directions,” Vasiliev told Espace.com. “For example, we study the impact of such events on Earth’s atmosphere and technological systems, understanding the link between superflares and extreme solar particle events and determining the conditions necessary to produce such superflares. eruptions.”