UH OH: Hundreds of “Superflares” Spotted in Sun-Like Stars.

Whenever a big solar storm appears, it necessarily comes with the looming threat that the Big One, aimed at our planet in just the right way, could overload the power grid and generally set civilization back a few centuries. While we should be thankful that hasn’t happened, we should also be thankful that our sun doesn’t seem as temperamental as some similar stars.

A study out today in Nature reveals hundreds of “superflares” from stars the same class as the sun. These flares can be thousands or even millions of times more energetic than the largest recorded one to strike Earth, the 1859 Carrington event that wreaked havoc with telegraph systems. The planet-hunting Kepler telescope spotted the huge events. While staring at a field of space for about four months, Kepler saw 83,000 stars of the same class as the sun, and saw a total of 365 superflares, which came from 148 of the stars.

I’m not sure the news is as reassuring as this story makes it sound, since the mechanism behind these flares remains obscure.

UPDATE: Sky and Telescope says don’t worry. Still unclear on the mechanism, though.