A “fire-breathing star,” known as EK Draconis is firing off a massive solar storm.
Astronomers reported this new phenomenon in a star system just 100 light-years away. An international team of researchers led by the University of Colorado-Boulder published a study on December 9th in Nature Astronomy. In it, they describe a star that shoots fire. And they warn a similar event could hit Earth.
The Colorado study has been tracking the sun-like star that shoots out solar flares, known as coronal mass ejections (CME). The CMEs are composed of fiery particles and plasma that are moving incredibly fast through space.
EK Draconis, Latin for the dragon, is located in Northern skies in the constellation Draco. Known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), stars regularly shoot out clouds of extremely hot particles (plasma) that hurtle through space at astonishing speeds.
If this was happening in our solar system it could burn up orbiting satellites and crash large cities’ power grids. The Earth could suffer terrible blackouts and lose communications networks.
