Superflares and our sun - could they have happened

[Ara Pacis]

I was looking some stuff up regarding a high-energy event in 774-775 in another thread and ran across an article about superflares.

Scientists think that solar flares are driven by the sun's magnetic field lines—invisible, tightly wound loops of energy connected to magnetically active regions known as sunspots. When a field line snaps, it whips an arc of light and charged particles away from the sun and into space. According to the widely accepted theory, a similar mechanism likely powers superflares, except that instead of being anchored to two star spots, a magnetic field line rises from the star and connects to a nearby hot Jupiter. Only by anchoring one end of the field line to another object can a star create a magnetic loop large enough to generate a truly immense flare when it snaps, Schaefer explained.
...
Even with the new data, Schaefer thinks the model linking planets to superflares can work—it just needs a few tweaks. For example, instead of using a hot Jupiter as an anchor, superflare stars may be using closely orbiting rocky planets—hot Earths or hot super-Earths—to ground their magnetic field lines.

Although the Wikipedia article states that there is no evidence that it's ever happened in our system, I was curious to know what such evidence would be. The article says that the former idea was that a star links to a Hot Jupiter, but observations suggest otherwise, leading researchers to think it's small rocky planets instead. They also say that Mercury is too far from the sun for this process. However, I wonder if that was the case in the early solar system when the sun was hotter and other bodies (or existing bodies?) might have been closer to the sun.

Furthermore, if superflares had happened in the distant past in our system, could they have had an effect on some processes that we wonder about.
Could superflares have been good or bad for the development of life on Earth and elsewhere in the system?
Could a magnetic connection event have occured with Venus and might such an energy-dump have had any effect on it's rotation or internal heating and resurfacing events?
What might be the effect on Mars with regard to its atmosphere and hydrology?
Would a superflare have an effect on more distant objects, like asteroids or even comets, perhaps producing thrust and orbital perturbations leading to eventual impacts with other bodies?

[EDG]

A proper superflare (such as what is seen at Kappa Ceti) would have at the very least destroyed our ozone layer and melted the ices from the surfaces of the moons of Jupiter and maybe Saturn. We'd see evidence for that in the solar system (e.g. reset cratering records all around the same time on icy satellites) if it happened, but it's not there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superflare

[hypergreatthing]

I don't believe we have ever observed one. It's complete speculation, but extinction events may have been caused by a super flare. There's no evidence to support that however. Though this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordovic...inction_events suggests that a theory about the ozone being stripped away during the Ordovician–Silurian extinction event may have been caused by a supernova/hypernova. If a superflare can do the same sort of damage to the ozone layer then it could be possible.

[Ara Pacis]

A proper superflare (such as what is seen at Kappa Ceti) would have at the very least destroyed our ozone layer and melted the ices from the surfaces of the moons of Jupiter and maybe Saturn. We'd see evidence for that in the solar system (e.g. reset cratering records all around the same time on icy satellites) if it happened, but it's not there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superflare

How old are the ice structures on those moons? I was wondering if superflares may have occurred earlier in the solar system at a time prior to the formation of those ice structures, during planetogenesis and continuing until any superflare-inducing object/orbits combinations ceased to occur. If a superflare is directional, which I assume it would be, the moons may have just happened to be out of position for intercept. Also, the size of superflares seems to suggest a large range of energies, ranging over 5 orders of magnitude, and statements related to melting of distant moon ice is relegated to ambiguously "large superflares" without giving an explanation, at least in the pages I've read thus far.

[EDG]

How old are the ice structures on those moons? I was wondering if superflares may have occurred earlier in the solar system at a time prior to the formation of those ice structures, during planetogenesis and continuing until any superflare-inducing object/orbits combinations ceased to occur. If a superflare is directional, which I assume it would be, the moons may have just happened to be out of position for intercept. Also, the size of superflares seems to suggest a large range of energies, ranging over 5 orders of magnitude, and statements related to melting of distant moon ice is relegated to ambiguously "large superflares" without giving an explanation, at least in the pages I've read thus far.

Europa has a very young icy surface, but that's a result of tidal heating due to the orbital resonances in the system. Ganymede and Callisto however have ancient icy terrain that have been dated (using crater counts) pretty much to the time of their formation (about 4.6 billion years ago). If they were affected by a superflare then their surfaces would have melted and reset the crater counts, but we don't see that.

[Ara Pacis]

Europa has a very young icy surface, but that's a result of tidal heating due to the orbital resonances in the system. Ganymede and Callisto however have ancient icy terrain that have been dated (using crater counts) pretty much to the time of their formation (about 4.6 billion years ago). If they were affected by a superflare then their surfaces would have melted and reset the crater counts, but we don't see that.

At what energy flux? From what I read there's a wide range of plausible superflare energies and the few comments I've seen only suggest ice melt at the higher end of the range. Or if there were large superflares capable of melting surface ice one those moons, they were consistently out of position for some reason. Perhaps that would be due to a resonance with inner planets (possible?) or a more distant orbit for Jupiter at the time before Jupiter migrated closer to the sun (Nice model). Or the crater-age relationship is not as valid as accepted (possible?). Or it only happened prior to the formation of those ice structures. I am, after all, referring to early when there might have been additional planets in the inner solar system to cause superflares with the sun in a suitable orbit.