Solar blasts are bad news for life on Proxima b

• Autores: Jacob Aron
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3089, 2016, pág. 9
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Proxima b, just revealed as the nearest exoplanet to Earth, is probably battered by incredible bursts of energy from its star every few months. That could be bad news for the prospects of finding life on Earth's neighboring world. Stars, including the sun, produce flares when their magnetic fields become twisted, setting off explosions of plasma that cause huge increases in brightness. James Davenport at Western Washington University in Be lung ham and his colleagues have been studying the planet's red dwarf star, Proxima Centauri, using the Canadian MOST spacetelescope, and calculated it is probably flaring almost constantly, about every 20 minutes.