Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2018

NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2018 flares ever observed in ultraviolet light. Dubbed the “Hazflare,” this event was more energetic than the most powerful flare from our Sun ever recorded. “With the Sun, we have a hundred years of good ob- servations,” Loyd said. “And in that time, we’ve seen one, maybe two, flares that have an energy ap- proaching that of the Hazflare. In a little less than a day’s worth of Hub- ble observations of these young stars, we caught the Hazflare, which means that we’re looking at super- flares happening every day or even a few times a day.” Could super-flares of such frequency and intensity bathe young planets in so much ultraviolet radiation that they forever doom chances of hab- itability? According to Loyd, “Flares like we observed have the capacity to strip away the atmosphere from a planet. But that doesn’t necessar- ily mean doom and gloom for life on the planet. It just might be dif- ferent life than we imagine. Or there might be other processes that A rtist's illustration of a young red dwarf stripping away a planet's atmosphere. [NASA, ESA, and D. Player (STScI)] could replenish the atmosphere of the planet. It’s certainly a harsh en- vironment, but I would hesitate to say that it is a sterile environment.” The next part of the HAZMAT pro- gram will be to study intermediate aged red dwarfs that are 650 million years old. Then the oldest red dwarfs will be analyzed and com- pared with the young and interme- diate stars to understand the evolution of the ultraviolet radiation environment of low-mass planets around these low-mass stars. !