Astronomers Record First-Ever Massive Stellar Blast Capable Of Stripping Planetary Atmospheres

For the first time ever, astronomers have watched a nearby star launch a massive burst of charged material into space, an explosion so strong that it could strip nearby planets of their atmospheres. The event, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), was detected using the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton space observatory and the LOFAR radio telescope. The findings, published in the journal Nature, offer scientists a new way to understand how stars influence the planets that orbit them, reported Euro News.

A CME is formed when a large amount of plasma is violently ejected from a star's upper atmosphere and spreads into space. Such intense eruptions affect the surrounding space, and scientists classify them as "space weather." This includes solar storms, which can produce auroras on Earth and weaken the atmospheres of nearby planets.

For many years, astronomers have been trying to observe CMEs on other stars, as such eruptions play a crucial role in determining whether a planet can remain habitable. Henrik Eklund, a scientist at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands, says this discovery provides new opportunities to understand space weather and eruptions on other stars. He says researchers will no longer be limited to the Sun as an example to understand CMEs.

The researchers also noted that smaller stars can produce much more powerful and intense space weather than the Sun. Such intense activity can determine whether planets orbiting such stars can retain their atmospheres and remain habitable.

This CME, observed outside our solar system, had so much energy that it could completely strip any planet in its path. This CME was moving at an incredible speed of about 2,400 kilometres per second, a speed only recorded in about one in twenty CMEs occurring on the Sun. According to the study, this explosion was not only fast but also so intense that any planet near the star would not be able to retain its atmosphere.

This event originated from a red dwarf star, which is much dimmer, cooler, and smaller than the Sun, with a mass approximately half that of the Sun. Research revealed that this star rotates about 20 times faster than the Sun and has a magnetic field about 300 times stronger. Since most of the planets in our galaxy have been found to orbit similar stars, this observation is considered extremely important in understanding the actual conditions of those planets.