Proxima Centauri shoots out humongous flare, with big implications for alien life

[Admin]

Scientists have detected the largest stellar flare ever recorded from Proxima Centauri. The finding changes what we know about stellar flares and the potential for alien life around red dwarfs.

Proxima Centauri shoots out humongous flare, with big implications for alien life : Read more

 

[rod]

The article reports, "Other red dwarfs likely give off equally powerful flares, thus decreasing the chances that red dwarf-hosted planets could support life. They also flare "much more frequently" than the sun, further reducing the chances of finding life in that star system, according to the researchers."

My observation. There are examples of other red dwarfs emitting very large flares. Enormous 'superflare' detected on nearby star, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200709113523.htm, July 2020. "... to AD Leonis. This M-type red dwarf has temperatures lower than that of our sun, resulting in a high incidence of flares. The team expected a number of these to be large and were astounded to then detect a superflare on their very first night of observations. "Our analyses of the superflare resulted in some very intriguing data," Namekata explains..."

The Sun is less active magnetically than other stars, https://phys.org/news/2020-05-sun-magnetically-stars.html, May 2020.

Questions concerning origin of life (e.g. how does abiogenesis work on a flaring or superflare young star?) and life abundant throughout the galaxy as well as our stable Sun for life to grow and populate on Earth (e.g. is this just time and chance?).

 

[Helio]

It seems ironic that the little stars are so feisty, but less ironic if you ever had a Chihuahua. [not me!]

From what I can gather, red dwarfs have fully convective atmospheres, unlike larger stars like the Sun. The red dwarf's rapid spin generates large mag. fields that suppress the downward, cooling action of the convective flows. As mag. fields entangle -- I assume differential rotation exists on red dwarfs, too -- then they can generate huge potential fields that eventually snap.

Once it was learned that the blasts were mostly intense in the higher energy bands (UV and above) then more attention was given to red dwarf flares. Earlier observations showed very little changes in the visible band so it was assumed they weren't that feisty. It seems, however, that they are very common, including monster flares.

An orbiting planet in the HZ will suffer greatly even though they are likely tidally locked. Atmospheres could be blown away in time. Abiogenesis would seem highly unlikely given the destructive power of UV and higher energy photons.

 

[Ruserious]

Interesting article you commented on. I'm constantly flip flopping (forgive the hard scientific term there) on whether life must be abundant in the universe or we are just a one off. This article flopped me over to the "one off" side until I played around with the simple math of eliminating all red dwarf systems and figuring the potential number of goldilocks zone planets and it is still enormous ..... Still I wonder if stars in general just keep either wiping out life that pops up and/or maybe they flare enough to kick civilizations back to a stone age often enough to try to explain where everyone else is. Ah brain food for insomniacs.....