The sun can cause dangerous "superferns", according to a new research

High energy super-superfluous is usually associated with fast-spinning young stars, but new evidence suggests that mature, robust stars, like ours, can still produce a strange super-light.

Stars hundreds of light-years away sometimes emit bursts of energy powerful enough to be detected by astronomers on Earth. Known as super-angles, they resemble solar flares of normal strength but on a much larger scale. Conventional thinking suggests that the superfluous are produced by young stars and that our average-aged Sun, 4.6 billion years old, is largely immune to such explosions of energy. spasmodic.

New research published in the Astrophysical Journal suggests that super-surfaces can indeed be generated by slow-moving mature stars like the Sun, although relatively infrequently. The new study, led by astrophysicist Yuta Notsu, a visiting scholar at the University of Colorado at Boulder, presented evidence suggesting that mature stars emit super-splinters every 2,000 to 3,000 years. It's rare, but not so rare that we should not worry about it.

To be clear, the effects of super-glare on Earth would not be enough to trigger an ecological calamity, but it would certainly make havoc in our high-tech civilization. The resulting high-energy radiation explosion would cause serious damage to electronics and telecommunication systems, cause power outages, damage satellites and expose astronauts to dangerous levels of radiation.

The superferns, it must be emphasized, are not the same as the geomagnetic storms, but they are related.

"Geomagnetic storms are serious disturbances of Earth's magnetic fields, while super-bursts are large explosions on the surface of the Sun or stars," said Notsu in an email to Gizmodo. "If super-surfaces appear on the Sun, they generate large plasma ejections and if such ejections collide with the Earth, very large magnetic storms are generated," he said, adding that "the Large geomagnetic storms result from super-super ".

The superflares were detected for the first time by the Kepler Space Telescope – and it happened a bit by accident. The space observatory is designed to detect exoplanets, but Kepler's observations sometimes show abnormal stellar behavior, in which some stars suddenly become very bright for short periods. Astronomers have dubbed these celestial features "the stars of Kepler superflare".

Normal-sized eruptions on the Sun are quite common, but they are certainly not of the same order as those presented here. Superflanges are considerably larger in terms of energy expenditure, the explosions being hundreds, if not thousands, more powerful than anything observed on our Sun. The unstable nature of young stars is probably the trigger for these explosions, explained Notsu.

"Large amounts of magnetic energy stored around large star points on the surface of stars can cause super-surfaces," he said. "Young, rapidly rotating stars can generate such amounts of magnetic energy very efficiently because of the large shear in rotation in the stellar interior."

Upon entering the new study, Notsu sought to know whether mature stars such as ours were likely to be superfluous and, if so, the frequency of such events. Kepler's observation data was confirmed by ESA's Gaia spacecraft and by the Apache Point observatory in New Mexico, which excluded other causes of apparent explosions, such as background noise. Once this has been done, the total list of known super angles has been reduced to 43 stars, similar to ours. A statistical analysis of these objects has confirmed the suspicion that the age of a star is a determining factor for its ability to produce superfluous; while young stars produced super-sized fields about once a week, mature stars averaged every few thousand years.

We do not know when our sun could produce a superflare. Asked if we can ever predict super-numbers, Notsu said it would be a big challenge.

"Our current study only shows that super angles can occur once every 2,000 to 3,000 years, and that it is not clear for the next 100 years," he told Gizmodo. . "However, our results suggest that the existence of large star spots, or sunspots, is a necessary condition for super-dimensions. So, at least, we can say that if large stars appear on the surface of the Sun, then it is quite possible that super-hatches occur. "

As a result, the next major research topic, he said, is to better understand how these sunspots of an unusual size can be generated by the Sun. Given these last conclusions, we should probably stick to that.