Solar flares' domino effect isn't limited to the sun, 16, 000-star sweep reveals

Our sun is a roiling mass of energy, with solar flares exploding on its surface, sending gas, plasma, and light that blasts across the solar system. The institutional report frames the development in practical terms and ties it to the broader mission or observing effort.

That matters because physics only takes a result seriously when the measurement chain remains robust under scrutiny. Experimental particle physics and precision metrology both operate in regimes where the signal sits far below the background noise, and where systematic uncertainties can mimic new physics if not controlled rigorously. The history of the field contains numerous anomalies that generated theoretical excitement before better data showed them to be artifacts, and it also contains genuine discoveries that were initially dismissed as noise. The difference is almost always resolved by independent replication with different instruments and different systematics. This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. When radiation from extra-powerful flares breaks through Earth's outer protective magnetosphere, it can affect satellites and even electric grids and cause the aurora borealis.

Astrophysicists have known for a long time that when our sun emits flares, some of them trigger a secondary or "sympathetic" flare, which occurs about 5% of the time. This is the first time that an effect well-known on the sun, sympathetic flaring, has been seen on other stars," says David Martin, assistant professor of astronomy and physics.

To start, the team gathered data on more than 16, 000 stars from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, a NASA effort to look for planets that might support life across many. Collaborators Jason Reeves, A23, AG25, and Andy Zhang, A26, developed an algorithm to detect sympathetic flares on those stars.

That can be really hard for some traditional flare-detection algorithms to detect. " The TOFFEE algorithm can distinguish between flares in close sequence, and judge—"with a lot of. The team ran the algorithm on more than 200, 000 flares on some 16, 000 stars, and the results were striking.

The broader interest lies as much in the method as in the headline number, because a durable measurement procedure can travel farther than a single result. When experimental physicists develop a technique that achieves new sensitivity or controls a previously uncharacterized systematic, that methodological contribution persists even if the specific measurement is later revised. This is one reason why precision physics experiments often generate long-term value that is not immediately visible in the original publication.

It turned out that the rate of sympathetic flares was between about 4% and 9%, similar to the 5% rate observed on our sun. The sympathetic flares were also typically separated from the first flares by a half hour to one-and-a-half hours, similar to the timing seen on the sun.

Because the account originates with Phys. org Space, it functions best as a primary institutional report that is close to the data and operations, not as independent scientific validation. Institutional communications are produced by organizations with legitimate interests in presenting their work in a favorable light, which does not make them unreliable but does make them partial. Details that complicate the narrative, including instrument limitations, unexpected failures and results below projections, tend to be minimized relative to progress messages. Technical documentation and peer-reviewed publications, where they exist, provide the complementary layer that institutional releases cannot substitute.

The next step is more measurement, tighter systematic control and scrutiny from groups whose experimental setups are genuinely independent. In experimental particle physics and precision metrology, the threshold for a discovery claim is a five-sigma excess surviving multiple analyses; an intriguing signal at lower significance is a reason to run more experiments, not a reason to revise the textbooks. Next-generation experiments currently under construction or commissioning will revisit several of the open questions that give the current result its context.

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