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Discovery Alert: Flaring Star, Toasted Planet - NASA Science:
A giant planet some 400 light-years away, HIP 67522 b, orbits its parent star so tightly that it appears to cause frequent flares from the star's surface, heating and inflating the planet's atmosphere.
On planet Earth, "space weather" caused by solar flares might disrupt radio communications, or even damage satellites. But Earth's atmosphere protects us from truly harmful effects, and we orbit the Sun at a respectable distance, out of reach of the flares themselves.
Not so for planet HIP 67522 b. A gas giant in a young star system – just 17 million years old – the planet takes only seven days to complete one orbit around its star. A "year," in other words, lasts barely as long as a week on Earth. That places the planet perilously close to the star. Worse, the star is of a type known to flare – especially in their youth.
[...] The star and the planet form a powerful but likely a destructive bond. In a manner not yet fully understood, the planet hooks into the star's magnetic field, triggering flares on the star's surface; the flares whiplash energy back to the planet. Combined with other high-energy radiation from the star, the flare-induced heating appears to have increased the already steep inflation of the planet's atmosphere, giving HIP 67522 b a diameter comparable to our own planet Jupiter despite having just 5% of Jupiter's mass.
See also:
- Close-in planet induces flares on its host star
- Bizarre Case of a Planet Destroying Itself By Triggering the Star
(Score: 2) by Username on Tuesday July 29, @02:53PM (3 children)
The sun gives off photons in all frequencies from gamma down, along with all other types of particles. We do not control the nuclear reaction of the sun. We cant stop it. It's just an ongoing explosion that has enough fuel to keep going for a long time. A solar flare is just a massive radiation event. Gamma, xrays, waveforms we don't even have names for are cooking everything in its path.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Wednesday July 30, @01:37AM (1 child)
For our edification, the power generation density of the Sun at the very center where it has the highest temperature and fusion rate is 276.5 W [archive.org] per m3 (computer model-derived). For perspective:
So it isn't really an explosion.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Wednesday July 30, @01:38AM
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Friday August 01, @10:42AM
These events have almost nothing to do with the nuclear reactor at the center of the sun, with the only exception that it's making the sun warm. The "massive radiation event" only originates at the surface, kind of like an xray originates in the xray machine and not at the power plant generating the electric field that is then used to accelerate electrons to create said xrays.
So, writing "uncontrolled nuclear explosion" and "massive radiation events" when they are just as connected as the xray machine to the power plant, is misleading at best.