Superflares Found On Sun-Like Stars

astroengine writes "Scientists have found superflares more than 1 million times more powerful than flares generated by the sun occurring on sun-like stars being studied by NASA's Kepler space telescope. The finding, 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."

Comments

Only half

[techno-vampire]

You realize, of course, that we're really only seeing half of the flares. That's because we can only see the ones that happen to be facing us. It's just like with pulsars: there's undoubtedly a lot of them out there that we'll never detect simply because we're not in the path of their output.

Re:Only half

[AbrasiveCat]

You realize, of course, that we're really only seeing half of the flares. That's because we can only see the ones that happen to be facing us. It's just like with pulsars: there's undoubtedly a lot of them out there that we'll never detect simply because we're not in the path of their output.

Probably less than half, maybe a 1/4 to 1/3. You aren't going to see the ones on edge. It could also depend on how often we look at each star and how fast they rotate relative to us.