Stars similar to the Sun produce a gigantic outburst of radiation on average about once every hundred years per star. Such superflares release more energy than a trillion hydrogen bombs and make all previously recorded solar flares pale in comparison. This estimate is based on an inventory of 56450 sun-like stars, which an international team of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) Germany presents on Friday, December 13th, 2024, in the journal Science. It shows that previous studies have significantly underestimated the eruptive potential of these stars. In data from NASA’s space telescope Kepler, superflaring, sun-like stars can be found ten to a hundred times more frequently than previously assumed. The Sun, too, is likely capable of similarly violent eruptions.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team has successfully integrated the mission’s telescope and two instruments onto the instrument carrier, marking the completion of the Roman payload. Now the team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will begin joining the payload to the spacecraft.

UCF researcher Debashis Chanda, a professor at UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center, has developed a new technique to detect long wave infrared (LWIR) photons of different wavelengths or “colors.”

The research was recently published in Nano Letters. The new detection and imaging technique will have applications in analyzing materials by their spectral properties, or spectroscopic imaging, as well as thermal imaging applications.

Earth’s rainy days are changing: They’re becoming less frequent, but more intense. Vegetation is responding.

The latest issue of Upward, official magazine of the International Space Station (ISSInternational Space Station) National Laboratory, highlights the AstroRad vest—a pioneering wearable technology designed to safeguard astronauts from harmful solar radiation during deep-space missions. Developed through a collaboration between StemRad and Lockheed Martin, the vest has undergone extensive testing through the ISS National Lab, leading to significant enhancements in its design and functionality.