Skip to navigation | Skip to content  Superflares found on Sun-
like stars  Artistic rendition of a "superflare star".  Artistic
rendition of a 'superflare star'. It has large starspots - much
larger than those on the Sun - and a superflare (white region)
occuring near the starspots (Source: Hiroyuki Maehara/Kwasan and
Hida Observatories, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto
University)  Super storms Scientists have found superflares more
than 1 million times more powerful than flares generated by the
Sun occurring on stars being studied by NASA's Kepler space
telescope.  The finding, published in the journal Nature, culled
from 120 days of observations of 83,000 stars, is the first to
detail how often and how energetic flares on other stars can be.
The discovery, however, raises a question about how the massive
outbursts, believed to be caused by complex magnetic
interactions, can physically occur.  Scientists previously
theorised a close-flying Jupiter-sized planet would be needed to
ground a super-flaring sta