For the first time, astronomers have watched a nearby star hurl an enormous burst of charged material into space, an explosion so powerful it could strip nearby planets of their atmospheres.<\/p>\n
The blast, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), was detected using the European Space Agency\u2019s (ESA) XMM-Newton space observatory and the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope, according to a new study from researchers from across Europe.<\/p>\n
Their observation, published in the journal Nature, gives scientists a new way to study how stars shape the worlds that orbit them.<\/p>\n
During a CME, massive amounts of plasma are ejected from a star\u2019s outer atmosphere, flooding the surrounding space.<\/p>\n
These eruptions drive what scientists call \u201cspace weather,\u201d such as the solar storms that can trigger auroras on Earth and erode the atmospheres of nearby planets.<\/p>\n
These kinds of stellar eruptions are common on the Sun, but until now none had been directly observed from another star.<\/p>\n
Astronomers have wanted to spot a CME on another star for decades because such outbursts can make or break a planet\u2019s chances of staying habitable.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis work opens up a new observational frontier for studying and understanding eruptions and space weather around other stars,\u201d Henrik Eklund, a researcher at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re no longer limited to extrapolating our understanding of the Sun’s CMEs to other stars,\u201d Eklund added.<\/p>\n
The research team said the finding suggests that smaller stars may produce even stronger space weather than our Sun, and that such violent stellar activity could play a crucial role in determining whether potentially habitable planets can hold onto their atmospheres and stay capable of supporting life.<\/p>\n
The first confirmed sighting of a stellar eruption beyond our Solar System was strong enough to peel away the atmosphere of any planet in its path, travelling at around 2,400 kilometres per second. This is a speed only seen in about one in 20 CMEs on the Sun.<\/p>\n
According to the study, the burst was both fast and dense enough to completely remove the atmosphere of any closely orbiting planet.<\/p>\n
Strong radio signal<\/p>\n
The eruption came from a red dwarf, a type of star that is much fainter, cooler, and smaller than the Sun, with roughly half the Sun\u2019s mass.<\/p>\n
Researchers say that the star rotates about 20 times faster and has a magnetic field around 300 times stronger. Most of the planets discovered in our galaxy orbit stars of this kind.<\/p>\n
When a stellar eruption blasts out into space, it creates a shock wave that sends out a burst of radio waves. The team detected one such short, intense signal from a star about 40 light-years away, relatively close by cosmic standards.<\/p>\n
Scientists were sure that the signal was caused by a CME.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis kind of radio signal just wouldn\u2019t exist unless material had completely left the star\u2019s bubble of powerful magnetism,\u201d said Joe Callingham, one of the study\u2019s authors and a radio astronomer at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON).<\/p>\n
The radio signal was spotted using the LOFAR radio telescope, which has antenna network stations in eight European countries, and new data processing methods developed by researchers at the Paris Observatory research institution.<\/p>\n
To confirm what they were seeing, the team also used ESA\u2019s XMM-Newton telescope to study the star\u2019s temperature, brightness, and rotation in X-ray light.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe needed the sensitivity and frequency of LOFAR to detect the radio waves,\u201d said David Konijn, one of the study\u2019s authors and a researcher at ASTRON.<\/p>\n
Without XMM-Newton, the findings would have been difficult to prove, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cNeither telescope alone would have been enough \u2013 we needed both,\u201d Konijn added.<\/p>\n
The telescope has been observing the universe since 1999. ESA says it continues to play a key role in studying such high-energy events.<\/p>\n
What the findings mean<\/p>\n
Scientists say the discovery is important for their search for habitable worlds around other stars.<\/p>\n
A planet\u2019s potential to support life depends partly on its distance from its star, or whether it sits within the so-called \u201chabitable zone\u201d where liquid water can exist on the surface.<\/p>\n
But that alone isn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n
If a star is especially active and frequently throws out powerful eruptions, any nearby planets may lose their atmospheres entirely, becoming barren rocks even if it\u2019s in the right zone for temperature.<\/p>\n
The finding also adds to the existing understanding of space weather by showing that the same violent processes shaping our Solar System are active throughout the galaxy, potentially influencing other planets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time, astronomers have watched a nearby star hurl an enormous burst of charged material into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[18,28434,19,17,6951,21148,133,26824,1235,93579],"class_list":{"0":"post-178033","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-european-space-agency","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-northern-lights","13":"tag-radio-waves","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-space-science","16":"tag-space-technology","17":"tag-space-telescope"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115541083787288625","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}