Stars are formed in a variety of sizes, and the smallest of them age more slowly than the largest. The most powerful explosions on the sun occur about once in a century, while more feeble events are happening all the time. By the time stars reach middle-age like our sun, these stellar flares become much less frequent and typically release less energy. In their youth, turbulent motions near the surface of a star frequently twist up their magnetic fields and produce violent eruptions that send harmful radiation and charged particles bursting into space. Sun-like stars are born with strong magnetic fields, which gradually decay throughout their lifetimes. Last month, researchers at the University of Colorado announced unprecedented observations of an even more powerful event that came from the nearest star to the solar system, Proxima Centauri. When the magnetic eruption reached the Earth, it induced currents in telegraph wires across the globe, shooting sparks out of pylons and delivering an electrical shock to some operators. In September 1859, the most powerful explosion in recorded history burst from the surface of the sun, releasing more energy than a billion of the largest nuclear bombs that have ever been in the U.S.
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