Huge eruptions from our sun may have helped shape the way Earth and Mars look today.

Similar to a mythical dragon, the sun-like star EK Draconis has spewed a stream of flaming gas. And how. The spewed monster-like plasma ball is far more powerful than anything scientists have ever seen on a sun-like star. According to researchers, the event is a sobering warning. For it suggests that our own sun is also capable of such a dangerous action.

European Championship Draconis

In the study astronomers spied on the stellar system EK Draconis, located tens of light-years away from Earth. This star bears striking resemblance to our own parent star. “It’s about the same size as our sun,” explains researcher Yuta Notsu. “But it’s only 100 million years old, making it a baby in cosmic terms.” According to the researchers, EK Draconis is actually a young version of the sun. “This is what our sun looked like 4.5 billion years ago,” Notsu said.

Coronal Mass Ejection

The researchers observed the star for 32 nights using planetary hunter TESS and Japan’s SEIMEI telescope. And suddenly they witnessed a fierce fireworks show. EK Draconis produced an unprecedentedly violent coronal mass ejection (CME for short), in which an enormous amount of energy and charged particles were expelled. The cloud of glowing hot plasma was moving at a hasty 500 kilometers per second and contained a mass of quadrillions of kilograms; more than 10 times larger than the most powerful coronal mass ejection ever seen from a Sun-like star.

Coronal mass ejections vs solar flares
Coronal mass ejections are often confused with solar flares. And that is not so strange. Both a CME and a solar flare are really nothing but an explosion that takes place on the sun. In addition, they both also arise because magnetic fields on the sun get twisted and suddenly reorganize, releasing enormous amounts of energy. And sometimes solar flares and CMEs also occur at the same time. But they are two different phenomena. Solar flares are huge bursts of X-rays and energy that travel at the speed of light. CMEs are huge plasma bubbles that move – considerably more slowly – into space.

The disastrous event is a warning of how dangerous space weather can be, the researchers say. Moreover, we should not underestimate our own sun. “Such large mass ejections could theoretically also occur on our sun,” Notsu says.

Our sun

Incidentally, researchers regularly spot coronal mass ejections on our sun, where clouds of extremely hot particles can race through space at immense speeds. While these events are a lot less violent than those observed on EK Draconis, our sun’s coronal mass ejections are also potentially bad news: If they hit Earth, it could set orbiting satellites ablaze. and paralyze the electricity supply of entire cities. “Coronal mass ejections can have a serious impact on the Earth and human society,” Notsu says.

A coronal mass ejection spotted on the surface of our own sun in 2015. Image: NASA

However, the new study suggests it could be much worse. And probably our own sun is also capable of this violence. That does not bode well for life on Earth. But rest assured, such immense coronal mass ejections as seen on EK Draconis are probably very rare on our sun, occurring at most once every few thousand years.

Early years of the solar system

That was different in the early years of our solar system. The researchers suspect that such violent eruptions were much more common at the time. They may even have helped shape the way Earth and Mars look today. “The atmosphere of present-day Mars is very thin compared to Earth’s,” Notsu said. “But we think the red planet had a much thicker atmosphere in the past. Coronal mass ejections can help us understand what has happened to the planet over billions of years.”

The researchers say the observations may shed some light on how coronal mass ejections have affected Earth and Mars over billions of years. Because such hot and fast plasma balls could have had serious consequences on the Earth and other planets. The researchers therefore underline that we should take this into account when we think about the origin of life on Earth. It is also important for our search for life on other worlds.