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An artist’s impression of a titanic flare erupting from Proxima Centauri in 2019. The explosive outburst was witnessed by nine observatories across the electromagnetic spectrum. Image: NRAO/S. Dagnello
Astronomers monitoring Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to Earth’s solar system, have spotted the most powerful flare ever seen erupting from the red dwarf, a titanic outburst lasting just seven seconds that generated 100 times more power than any known flare from the Sun.
“Stars like Proxima Centauri look different from our sun, and they behave differently too,” said Parke Loyd, a postdoc at Arizona State University and a co-author of a recent paper in