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It was in the year 2000 and scientists had never seen anything like it: astronomers reported traces of "super lightning" on distant stars – solar splinters several thousand times more energetic than conventional solar flares.
As researchers have observed in subsequent studies, these intense eruptions were more common on young, rapidly rotating stars, as well as on stars with high magnetic activity. Maybe our Sun, much older and quieter, would never do something so violent, we speculated.
"It was thought that stars similar to those of the slowly rotating Sun did not fundamentally exhibit events with high magnetic activity, but also super-surfaces," says a team of astronomers led by Yuta Notsu of the University of Colorado at Boulder in a new hypothesis article seems to be wrong.
In a new analysis of super-glare events observed by the Kepler Space Telescope, researchers report that super-magnitudes can indeed be produced by Sun-like stars, although much less frequently than by younger stars, more magnetically active.
"Our study shows that super-events are rare events," says Notsu.
"But it is possible that we can live such an event in the next 100 years."
Until now, scientists have observed that Sun-type stars, that is, G-type main sequence stars, produce super-magnitudes, although we still can not explain how these high energy events are triggered, in part because of a lack of analysis.
To better understand, the Notsu team conducted new spectroscopic observations using Kepler data, also using data from the Gaia spacecraft of the European Space Agency and the European Space Agency. 39, Apache Point observatory in New Mexico.
In all, they found 43 Sun-like stars that had produced super-surfaces in the past – and although their statistical analysis provides clearer information about the characteristics of these energy explosions, the researchers ultimately say that we need more data to understand the likelihood of a sun superflare could be.
"We need more studies to clarify the properties of superflare stars on Sun-like stars and to answer the important question:" Can our sun have super-superfluous? & # 39; ", Writes the team.
"The number of old superfluous stars similar to those of the Sun that turn slowly [observed] are now very small and the ongoing statistical discussions are not enough. "
Whatever it is, Notsu says that the more we learn about the super fields, the more we realize that even though they are more common on younger stars, the Sun-like stars do not are certainly not excluded from this powerful and potentially very dangerous form of stellar phenomena. .
"Young stars have super-surfaces about once a week," says Notsu.
"For the Sun, it's on average every few thousand years."
This loose certainty is all we have at the moment, but it is imperative that we try to refine our knowledge in the future – not just about the likelihood of a super rocket emanating from the Sun. but also about what could happen if it happened.
Existing research suggests that a fairly powerful solar flare could annihilate the technology as we know it, potentially causing billions of dollars of damage worldwide and causing all kinds of strange and unpredictable disasters.
If this rocket turns out to be a huge super rocket like that of the kind astronomers who have witnessed hundreds of light-years away? Well, the truth is we do not really know how bad it could be.
"A more accurate assessment of the effects of super-angles is an urgent next task," Notsu explained. Astronomy.
"But we can now expect things such as large-scale power outages, satellite communication failures and strong radiation in the air … This topic should [start to be considered] seriously from now on. "
The results are reported in The astrophysical journal.
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