We now turn to look at young star systems in super short X-ray wavelengths using the Chandra X-ray Observatory. 

Researchers have long known that young stars can emit powerful flares that can clear their surroundings of lighter-weight material. Exactly how common these kinds of events actually are has been a mystery, so this team watched and counted. Specifically, they watched 24,000 stars under five million years old in forty different regions of the sky. They caught over one thousand stars giving off flares that are vastly more powerful than anything we’ve seen in our more adult-aged Sun. 

These stellar toddlers were caught giving off flares 100,000 times to, in a few instances, 10,000,000 times more energetic than our Suns flares. The smaller flares are weekly occurrences for the young stars, with about two mega flares occurring each year. According to a release from Chandra: …scientists have argued that these giant flares can help “give” planets to still-forming stars by driving gas away from disks of material that surround them. This can trigger the formation of pebbles and other small rocky material that is a crucial step for planets to form.  On the other hand, these flares may “take away” from planets that have already formed by blasting any atmospheres with powerful radiation, possibly resulting in their complete evaporation and destruction in less than 5 million years.

Exactly how these X-ray flashes help and hinder will require future study.

More Information

Chandra press release

“X-ray Super-Flares From Pre-Main Sequence Stars: Flare Energetics And Frequency,” Konstantin V. Getman and Eric D. Feigelson, to be published in The Astrophysical Journal (preprint on arxiv.org)