First stellar Coronal Mass Ejection detected beyond our Sun

Astronomers have made the first definitive observation of a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) on a nearby star. CME events are a regular occurrence at our sun. Massive amounts of material are emitted and flood nearby space. Some can create the dazzling auroras seen in the sky from Earth as they interact with the magnetosphere, but …

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

This is the paper. It's locked and I couldn't find a preprint. The star is StKM 1-1262. And that reads like another nail in the coffin for those who think M dwarfs could have habitable planets.

[Paul Kinsler]

It's locked and I couldn't find a preprint.

Since it's in Nature, and there was a press release, I expect it was under embargo.

FWIW, the detected event occurred May 2016; this result was obtained by mining old/existing data. Not that this was announced first off; you have to skim/read all the way past the references and into the "Methods" section to find this out.

[ThatOne]

Re: It's locked and I couldn't find a preprint.

Well, it actually happened in Mai 1886, we just only got the news now...

_{(That's exactly the same time Dr. John Pemberton invented Coca Cola™. Hmmm...)}

[The commentard formerly known as Mister_C]

Re: It's locked and I couldn't find a preprint.

Don't worry about when it happened. I can guarantee that the evening it reaches us will be cloudy. Just like tonight is for our star's latest CME

[Neil Barnes]

Re: It's locked and I couldn't find a preprint.

There's a rule. It's always cloudy when there's something interesting in the sky. Or at least, where I am.

[ThatOne]

Re: It's locked and I couldn't find a preprint.

It's everywhere the same, it's a subcategory of Murphy's Law.

[Elongated Muskrat]

You say that, but are all M dwarfs rotating 20 times faster than Sol with a magnetic field 300 times stronger? I think those are probably the relevant parameters for the strength of CMEs, alongside having half the mass. Logically, the strength of CMEs would be a function of the strength of the magnetic field, and off the star's gravitational pull (so the mass); is the stronger field due to the faster spin, the lower mass, a different elemental composition (perhaps higher metal* content?), or some combination of these things?

All this really tells us is that we can detect whopping great big CMEs that take place 130 ly away, and the fact that astronomers have been looking for them for a while implies that ones of this magnitude, or the stars that produce them, are perhaps not that common.

*In astrophysics, any element other than hydrogen or helium is considered a "metal"; obviously, chemists have a different opinion on this; it's a great example of the balkanisation of science, where different disciplines diverge because they aren't talking to each other properly.

[ThatOne]

Indeed, there was some generalization happening in this article. Because I wonder what would happen if our Sun was rotating 20 times faster and had a magnetic field 300 stronger. Its CMEs would certainly strip the atmosphere off all planets, it probably might even strip the planets off their atmospheres... (Seriously now, planets would had never been able to form, since the CMEs of the young Sun would had immediately depleted the initial dust cloud.)

Red dwarfs are prone to flares, we already know that. I guess the only real news here is that they managed to find one so powerful they were actually able to measure it, and while that's big news for astrophysicists, it's quite uninteresting for the wider audience. Which is probably the reason of the "OMG they are all dead now!" perspective.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

>Red dwarfs are prone to flares

Well it was quite a few years ago

[Elongated Muskrat]

Only Duane Dibley, I should have thought.

[Paul Herber]

"The CME flinger was a red dwarf, as are many stars in the Milky Way that have planets orbiting them."

I'm sure it's more likely to be a garbage pod.

[Richard 12]

No, Quagaars. Double A, actually.

[jonfr400]

Red dwarfs are dead zones

One thing that is not considered is that Red Dwarf stars are a dead zone. If not for the lack of usable energy. Then for those insane flares that kill everything in their path. Large stars are also dead zones for different reason, but also large solar flares. The space science community seems to ignore this for the wishful thinking that there is life around such stars. So far they have been searching and finding what I've always expected them to find. Nothing but dead planets that have always been dead and if they are not dead planets, then the Red Dwarf makes sure that those planets remain dead with its flare activity that kills anything that might have started living in such star system.

Sorry for my confusing English.

[Christoph]

Get Lone Star to flip the switch to put the atmosphere back.