Radiation blasts leave most Earth-like planet uninhabitable
"Energy released by each superflare equivalent to 100 billion megatons of TNT"
- November 18, 2015
- University of Warwick
- The most Earth-like planet could have been made uninhabitable by vast quantities of radiation.The atmosphere of the planet, Kepler-438b, is thought to have been stripped away as a result of radiation emitted from a superflaring red dwarf star, Kepler-438. Regularly occurring every few hundred days, the superflares are approximately 10 times more powerful than those ever recorded on the sun and equivalent to the same energy as 100 billion megatons of TNT.
The planet Kepler-438b is shown here in front of its violent parent star. It is regularly irradiated by huge flares of radiation, which could render the planet uninhabitable. Here the planet's atmosphere is shown being stripped away.
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