CU Boulder researcher finds that the sun could experience a superflare

Such an event could greatly disrupt modern reliance on electronics

Camera file photo
A massive solar flare exploded from the surface of the sun.

A visiting research fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder found that superflares can still happen with older stars, like the Earth’s sun, which could have potentially devastating implications for the world today.

Yuta Notsu, a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science visiting researcher at CU Boulder, was the lead author of the study published in May in The Astrophysical Journal.

Superflares, which were first discovered in 2009 via the Kepler Space Telescope, are strong explosions observed on stars. While they are similar to solar flares, they can produce up to 10,000 times more energy.

Solar flares happen on the sun every week, according to Notsu.

However, a superflare could cause a large disruption on Earth. It’s likely that a superflare on the sun would disrupt electronics worldwide, as well as communication satellites that are in orbit in space. It also could create mass blackouts.

A superflare would alter the upper atmosphere, disrupting signal transmissions with GPS satellites. An explosion also could send particles and electromagnetic fluctuations into Earth’s atmosphere, which could blow out transformers and power grids, according to NASA.

Notsu’s study discovered these superflares can happen on stars as old as the sun, which is 4.6 billion years old, though it is more rare.

Notsu, along with an international team of researchers, used data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft and from the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico for the study.

The group focused on superflares that happened on 43 stars similar to the sun, then analyzed the data from those events. While they found that younger stars do tend to produce more superflares, they also can happen on older stars.

Notsu said older stars will experience a superflare every 2,000 to 3,000 years or so. If a superflare happened a thousand years ago, it probably wasn’t noticed because there weren’t electronics, he said.

The world did experience a similar event with the solar storm of 1859, he said, which wiped out telegraph systems and created an aurora in the sky. Now, with the connection of nearly everything to technology, such an event could be even more disruptive.

While Notsu said he’s not positive a superflare will occur in the next 100 years or so, he is sure it will happen eventually, and precautions should be taken to protect from space radiation electronics both on Earth and in space.