Jakarta –
Star 100 light years from Earth emitted a powerful explosion that had never been seen before. Astronomers say this explosion could be a warning sign for Earth.
The star named EK Draconis is in the constellation Draco and has a mass similar to Sun. But EK Draconis is still very young, at around 100 million years, compared to the sun’s 4.6 billion years.
As is known, the sun often ejects plasma which is known as a solar flare. The flare can be small in size, but sometimes this burst of energy can be much larger.
A solar flare can also launch superheated plasma into space, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME). EK Draconis is known to have just ejected plasma in a massive explosion 10 times larger than anything seen in a sun-like star before.
“These results help improve our understanding of how coronal mass ejections occur in the 4.6 billion-year history of stars the size of our sun and our own sun,” said Yuta Notsu, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado Boulder, who co-authored the report. from Gizmodo, Sunday (12/12/2021).
“Although super-large CMEs like this are more common at younger ages, this event could be a proxy for the possibility of a super-CME associated with a super-flare that may occur on the sun once in hundreds or thousands of years.”
The report, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, indicates an explosion of similar strength could have occurred in the Sun. In fact, even a small solar flare can have a large enough impact if it leads to Earth, such as disrupting electronic equipment and satellite orbits.
CMEs of significant size can damage satellites and damage power plants. Such as the CME that occurred in 1989 which resulted in blackouts in Quebec, Canada and nearly toppled power plants in the United States.
Scientists observed EK Draconis in 2020 for 32 days using NASA’s TESS telescope and Kyoto University’s SEMEI telescope. One night, they saw the star emit a large flare which was followed by the early stages of CME.
That stage, known as a filament explosion, sent the plasma from EK Draconis traveling at a speed of 1.8 million km/h. Notsu said so far his team had only observed the early stages of CME, and to see the later stages they had to observe EK Dracnos using an ultraviolet and X-ray telescope.
Notsu added a super flare from Sun fairly rare because the older stars are usually quieter. But he cautions that data shows that the sun has thrown super flares at Earth several times in the last 10,000 years.
Watch Videos “NASA Confirms Sunrise Information from the West Is a Hoax“
[Gambas:Video 20detik]
(vmp/vmp)
– .
