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Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope captured a titanium super-light emerging from the surface of a red dwarf. The explosion was more powerful than ever detected by the Sun and would probably have wreaked havoc on all the planets that could have been in orbit nearby.
Properly, the powerful flare was detected in a Hubble survey called HAZMAT, an entangled acronym representing HAbitable areas and the activity of dwarf M over time. The investigation, led by Evgenya Shkolnik of the University of Arizona, studies red dwarfs at three different stages of their evolution: youth, adulthood, and old age.
Red dwarves make up about three-quarters of the stars in the Milky Way. By extension, most planets in the habitable areas of the galaxy, those located at the proper distance from their sun to allow liquid water to exist on the surface, form an orbit around red dwarfs.
"The goal of the HAZMAT program is to understand the habitability of the planets. around the low-mbad stars, "said Shkolnik. "These low mbad stars are of crucial importance for the understanding of planetary atmospheres."
Indeed, the ultraviolet radiation emitted during such explosions can alter the chemistry of the atmosphere. a planet or eventually eliminate it completely.
Observations of 18 thinnings in dwarves aged 40 million years indicate that such stars generate lights 100 to 1,000 times more powerful than those observed with older suns. The most powerful torch observed, nicknamed the Hazflare, released 30 times more energy than any torch previously observed under ultraviolet light according to Hubble spectrographs.
"When I realized the amount of light emitted by the superflare, I sat down to look at my computer. screen for a while just thinking about Whoa & # 39; "Parke said. "Most of the potentially habitable planets in our galaxy have had to withstand rashes as intense as those we've seen at some point in their lives. It's a sobering thought. "
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