This study is the first of its kind to confirm the occurrence of a coronal mass ejection from a star other than our Sun, which is a massive projectile of plasma that travels at high speed.

The team of scientists confirms that this discovery is of great importance in the search for habitable worlds, as understanding the nature and intensity of stellar revolutions will become a decisive factor in identifying promising targets for future study.

The explosion was monitored by capturing a “Type II radio burst,” which arises as a result of the shock wave accompanying the movement of the coronal mass ejection from the star’s atmosphere towards interplanetary space.

Scientists were able to observe this phenomenon from a star 40 light-years away from Earth, which is approximately ten times farther than the nearest star system to us.

Despite previous speculation about the presence of coronal mass ejections outside our solar system, this radio explosion represents the first conclusive detection from another star, making it the most accurate and convincing to date.

The star StKM 1-1262 has a scientific classification of the M dwarf category, which are stars smaller than our sun but active than it, as they release flares and coronal mass ejections at higher rates. Despite this intense activity, these stars remain a major target for the search for life outside Earth, due to their wide spread in the universe, and the ease of observing planets around them due to their small size, which causes the planets to orbit in close orbits.

However, this research approach carries an important caveat: Because of the intense activity of these stars, and the proximity of their “habitable zone” (where liquid water can exist), compared to Earth’s distance from the Sun, any Earth-like planet would be exposed to huge amounts of stellar emissions.

“The problem may be that these emissions are so regular, hitting planets so frequently that they are stripped of their atmospheres,” explains Joe Callingham, lead author of the study. “Even if a planet is in the habitable zone, excessive stellar activity could destroy any chance of life.”

The research team relied on its discovery on data from the Lovar radio telescope in the Netherlands, supported by new data processing methods developed by researchers at the Paris Observatory.

These advanced technologies made it possible to detect a small flash in the sky, despite the technical challenges. Subsequent observations using the XMM Newton space telescope confirmed that the star indeed belongs to the M dwarf category, rotating at 20 times the speed of the Sun’s rotation.

Analyzes revealed that the coronal mass ejection is moving at an amazing speed of up to 2,400 km per second, a speed that rarely occurs even on our sun, as its occurrence does not exceed 5% of similar explosions. The readings indicate that these emissions have sufficient intensity and speed to attract planetary atmospheres in close orbits.

Source: Live Science