Extreme solar flares shot out by a young sun may have incubated life on Earth
Solar flares three times more powerful than what we've seen in modern times may have produced the chemistry needed for life to develop by pummeling the Earth with charged particles 4 billion years ago, a new study suggests.
By studying sunlike stars far from our own, scientists have learned more about the sun than they would have if they just looked at our nearest star.
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Using data collected by the Kepler Space Telescope, researchers have found that huge “superflares” shooting out from the young sun could have helped incubate life on Earth, allowing it to grow and thrive, according to a new study in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The young sun was dimmer but far more active than it is today, with solar flares packing a bigger punch than they do now.
“We know that life started on Earth about 4 billion years ago, but the fundamental question is … why 4 billion years ago? Could life have started 1 billion years ago, 2 billion years ago, 3 billion years ago? Is there anything special about 4 billion years ago?” co-author of the study Vladimir Airapetian told Mashable in an interview.
Airapetian thinks 4 billion years might be the magic epoch because of the superflares thought to have come from the sun at the time.
This new study, hypothesizes that the superflares shot forth by an early sun may have helped to warm the Earth, and even produced the chemistry needed for life.
This hinges on the fact that the young sun was likely much dimmer than it is today, leaving the Earth far colder than it is now and making it more difficult for liquid water to remain on its surface. This may have lessened the planet’s chances for habitability.
“This so-called faint young sun paradox, a problem initially raised by Carl Sagan and George Mullen, is perplexing because it is unclear why Earth was not permanently glaciated under the less luminous sun,” planetary scientist Ramses Ramirez, who was unaffiliated with the study, wrote in a News & Views piece for Nature Geoscience.
So, how did life develop?
According to the new study, a stormy sun may be the answer to the young sun paradox.
If the sun shot out flares thousands of times the size and power of today, yet the star was dimmer than it is now, those flares could have compensated for the lower energy delivered to Earth.
This could have increased the availability of liquid water, thereby helping to foster the diversity of life we see today.
While those flares may have warmed Earth’s climate, they also could have created the chemistry needed for life to evolve, according to the study.
When flares shoot out from the sun, sometimes they are accompanied by huge bursts of plasma known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs.
These CMEs carry charged particles from the star to Earth, slamming into Earth's magnetic field. Some of the solar particles make their way into the atmosphere, allowing them to interact with neutral particles like molecular nitrogen.
The nitrogen breaks apart, and that disruption would allow the element to become more chemically reactive and recombine to form other molecules needed to warm the planet and sustain liquid water on its surface, Airapetian said.
Looking for life elsewhere
This could prove useful for scientists hunting for life elsewhere in the universe as well.
"The findings may have implications for the climates and potential biology of terrestrial exoplanets orbiting very young sun-like stars," Ramirez added.
Some of the most numerous stars in the galaxy are dim red stellar objects that could host a multitude of planets.
Some scientists have suggested that planets orbiting around these stars may not be ideal hosts for life because of how active these stars can be, shooting off extreme flares that could disrupt such worlds.
This study, however, may throw a wrench into that generalization.
Some smaller, redder stars appear to start off very active in the early stages of their lives before calming down and living in relative peace for billions upon billions of years.
That early activity, instead of destroying a planet, may just help spur along the processes needed for life to evolve, if this new study can be used to understand these kinds of stars as well.
That extreme space weather, “stirs the pot,” Seth Shostak, a researcher at the SETI Institute unaffiliated with the study, told Mashable in an interview.
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Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
