A star of about eight percent the Sun's mass has been caught emitting an enormous 'super flare' of X-rays—a dramatic high-energy eruption that poses a fundamental problem for astronomers, who did not think it possible on stars that small.
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Energy can only be placed in a star's magnetic field by charged particles, which are also known as ionized material and created in high-temperature environments. As an L dwarf, however, J0331-27 has a low surface temperature for a star—just 2100K compared to the roughly 6000K on the Sun. Astronomers did not think such a low temperature would be capable of generating enough charged particles to feed so much energy into the magnetic field. So the conundrum is: how a super flare is even possible on such a star.
"That's a good question," says Beate. "We just don't know—nobody knows."
