Space Telescope Catches Monster Flare

gollum123 writes, "NASA's Swift satellite has seen a giant flare explode from a nearby star. Our sun also flares when twisted magnetic field lines in the solar atmosphere suddenly snap — but this was on a far larger scale, perhaps 100 million times as strong. The energy released by the explosion on II Pegasi was equivalent to about 50 quintillion atomic bombs. If the Sun were ever to produce such an outburst, it would almost certainly cause a mass extinction on Earth. II Pegasi is a binary system 135 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. Its two stars are close, only a few stellar radii apart; as a result, tidal forces cause both stars to spin quickly, rotating in lockstep once in seven days compared to the Sun's 28-day rotation period. Fast rotation is thought to be conducive to strong stellar flares."

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Re:Reported on Election Day, Coincidence?

[tunguska1908]

The parent comment is an amusing narratve, but if we wanted to find some holes in it....

1) The article is in regard to a large stellar flare, not a solar one. Currently the Sun is at solar minimum, and while large solar activity can occur at this time of the cycle, such activity is rare. For those that are interested, the National Solar Observatory [nso.edu] has images of the current solar activity, and a current space weather report is available from the Space Environment Center [noaa.gov]. Besides all of that, the flare the article is referring to was detected close to a year ago.

2) Even if the storm referred to were from our own star, most of the effects of solar activity do not reach Earth for several days (especially those that affect our electronics). Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are large amounts of charged particles that can interact with our magnetic field causing geomagnetic storms. These particles take numerous hours to several days to travel from the Sun to Earth. On the other hand, radio interference can happen as soon as the storm is detected (8 minutes after the event). But even then, the antennas usually need to be pointing toward the Sun in order for the SNR to be low enough for problems.

Images and more Information

[iONiUM]

Here is the NASA link to this item:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/mon ster_flare.html [nasa.gov]

I really wish slashdot would just link the real news item instead of the crappy ones it always seems to find. There wasn't even an image on the one they linked.

Re:So where is the link to the picture in the Arti

[tunguska1908]

Also, Swift is not designed to detect in the optical range. It's primarily designed to detect gamma rays, and in this case, x-rays. Any images that would be release would probably be spikes on a graph.

From the article...

"Swift's Burst Alert Telescope usually detects gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions known, which arise from star explosions and star mergers. The II Pegasi flare was energetic enough create a false alarm for a burst detection. Scientists quickly knew this was a different kind of event, however, when the flare overwhelmed Swift's X-ray Telescope, a second instrument."

Re:Images and more Information

[tunguska1908]

Note... the images are not from the event described in the article. While very informative, they are images of flares on the Sun. The event that is described in the article is rather distant to get that type of imagery.

Re:Hollywood

[Scarletdown]

"If the Sun were ever to produce such an outburst, it would almost certainly cause a mass extinction on Earth."

This sounds like a great premise for a hollywood sci-fi epic.

You mean something like this? [imdb.com]

Re:Mass extinction?

[IdleTime]

Flares from other stars will not have any effect on us. The sun flares all the time, but most flares are small.

If you want to know more about the II Pegasi flare, the paper is called Nonthermal Hard X-ray Emission and Iron Kalpha Emission from a Superflare on II Pegasi [arxiv.org]