Amid much excitement in 2016, astronomers revealed the discovery of an Earth-sized planet around Proxima Centauri, the star closest to our Sun. This exoplanet, just 4.2 light years from Earth, was close enough to its red dwarf star that water might well exist on its surface.

Alas, now we know that life probably does not live on the planet, at least not on the surface. In March 2016, astronomers using an array of telescopes known as Evryscope observed a "superflare" 10 times larger than any previous one detected from the red dwarf star. Based on these observations and those of other instruments with spectrographs, the astronomers determined that about five of these superflares occur in a given year.

In an unpublished paper that describes their use of a model for interactions between the flares and a planetary atmosphere, the astronomers suggest such extreme solar activity would reduce the ozone of an Earth-like atmosphere by 90 percent within just five years, with complete depletion occurring within a few hundred thousand years. This means that ultraviolet light observed in the recent superflare reached the surface with 100 times the intensity needed to kill even microbic life that is resistant to UV light.

"Recent results have suggested that some more complex life such as lichens evolved for extreme environments and with adaptations such as UV-screening pigments may survive these radiation levels," the astronomers write in a journal article preprint. "This suggests that life on Proxima b will have to undergo complex adaptations to survive, even if the planetary atmosphere survives the long-term impact of the stellar activity."

That's too bad, because Proxima b has some intriguing characteristics. The planet is probably rocky, rather than a gas giant, and it's tidally locked to its star, meaning one side is always sunny while the other is perpetually gloomy. Therefore, if the planet does have an atmosphere, the surface temperature may vary from +30 degrees Celsius on the light side to -30 degrees Celsius on the dark side. These conditions would allow water, if the planet has any, to exist on the surface of the world as a liquid at some locations.

The arXiv. Abstract number: 1804.02001 (About the arXiv). Submitted to AAS Journals.</s>Two years ago, scientists detected a super-flare from the Sun’s neighboring star Proxima Centauri. The Red Dwarf, located some 4.25 light years away from our planet, sits at the bottom on the scale of stars, but the eruption baffled scientists, hinting that similar flares may have wiped out life on Earth’s closest exoplanet, if it had any.

Proxima Centauri is believed to host at least one Earth-sized rocky planet, dubbed Proxima b, in the habitable zone — the region where a planet is far enough from its star to have liquid water and bolsters the chances of finding life. But, the thing is even if Proxima b had any life, it might have been destroyed by the occurrence of intense flares, Allison Youngblood, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and her team estimated.

The solar flare detected back in 2016 was 10 times larger than previous ones and one of the strongest ever detected from a star this size. It unleashed 316,227 petawatts of energy and grew in brightness by a whopping factor of 68. At this level, even humans on Earth would have seen the faint star shining in the night sky, Popular Mechanics reported.

Using those observations and sophisticated modeling techniques, scientists predict at least five such flares erupt from the small star every year. This could mean serious trouble for Earth’s closest exoplanet and trim down the possibility of microbial life survival on its surface.

According to the astronomers, regular interactions between the flares and planetary atmosphere could drastically affect Proxima b's atmosphere. For a planet similar to Earth, flares of such magnitude would weaken the ozone layer progressively and deplete it by a whopping 90 percent in a matter of five years. And if this goes on for a few hundred thousand years, the ozone layer would be removed completely, leaving the planet unprotected from its star's harmful ultraviolet radiation.

"Then, if another one of these superflares comes along and there is no ozone protection, the UV radiation incident on the planet's surface would kill even the most radiation-resistant organisms," Youngblood said in a journal article preprint.

With that, the astronomers also note that if the atmosphere of the planet survives superflare impacts in the long-run, microscopic organisms will have to undergo complex adaptations to survive on the planet, just like how lichens evolved for extreme environments with features like UV-protecting pigments, ArsTechnica reported. Scientists around the world are working to better understand the impact of stellar flares in distant systems and how they could affect the possibility of life.

The ArXiv.org preprint paper titled “The first naked-eye superflare detected from Proxima Centauri” was made available on April 5 and is set to be published in the AAS Journals.</s>Saturday Night! March 24th! It’s Earth Hour! 8:30pm -9:30pm local time.. YOU TURN IT ALL OFF!

What is Earth Hour? How did it get started?:

Earth Hour started as a symbolic lights out event in Sydney in 2007. Now Earth Hour is the world’s largest grassroots movement for the environment. It inspires millions around the World to help planet Earth. Earth Hour is coordinated by WWF and other volunteer organizations, Earth Hour’s Greatest Strength is the Power of People. Take Action

9 Things you can do during Earth Hour</s>Over the weekend, a middle latitude coronal hole (88) started to face earth. This is the same coronal hole that was responsible for a moderate (G2) geomagnetic storm last month. Now it seems like the same coronal hole is at it again, spewing high-speed solar wind - headed towards Earth this week.

According to Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), a minor (G1) geomagnetic storm watch is now in effect for Tuesday and Wednesday. The storm watch was issued “due to the arrival of a negative polarity coronal hole high-speed stream,” SWPC detailed on its website.

C. Alex Young, associate director for science in the heliophysics science division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, published in a report Monday that “three substantial coronal holes” arrived on his radar last week. Young describes coronal holes as an “open magnetic field from which high-speed solar wind rushes out into space.” If the high-speed solar wind is earth facing, then “it interacts with Earth’s magnetosphere” and lead to all sorts of problems.

“For much of this week the sun featured three substantial coronal holes (Apr. 3-6, 2018). Coronal holes appear as large dark areas which are identified with arrows in the still image. These are areas of open magnetic field from which high speed solar wind rushes out into space. This wind, if it interacts with Earth’s magnetosphere, can cause aurora to appear near the poles. They are not at all uncommon. Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA.”

As of Tuesday morning, there are radio blacks across the world. During moderate geomagnetic storms, “intense ionization within the D-layer propagation region is observed on the sunlit side of Earth, and affects a wide range of frequencies within the HF Spectrum (3 – 30 MHz),” said Solarham. In other words, solar storms can degrade HF radio communications (radio blackouts).

Real-Time Solar Wind (RTSW) data shows an uptick in solar wind activity hitting Earth’s shields starting on Monday and increasing into Tuesday.

The Estimated Planetary K index (Kp) charts below are “one of the most common indices used to indicate the severity of the global magnetic disturbances in near-Earth space,” said Solarham. A Kp index of five or more shows a geomagnetic storm is in progress.

K-indices of five or greater indicates storm-level geomagnetic activity around the Earth.

Below is a one-week K-indices view from four magnetometer reporting stations.

Below is a one week A-indices view from four magnetometer reporting stations.

We have stated before, U.S. power grid failures are possible due to strong geomagnetic storms; in today’s case, it looks like a G1 (Minor) geomagnetic storm could produce auroras for much of Canada, over the next few nights.

The Daily Star quotes Brian Gaensler, an astrophysicist at the University of Toronto, who gave a speech earlier this month — warning of the “carnage solar flares can cause.”

“The concern here is that if the radiation from a solar flare hits the earth, it can knock out satellites, disrupt mobile phones, and other forms of communication,” he said. The effects of a solar storm could last months – or even years – as authorities would have to repair all the damaged infrastructure. Specialist insurance firm Lloyd’s of London estimates the repair bill could cost up to £1.8 trillion. Experts have warned it is just a matter of time before we suffer another direct hit. Pete Riley, senior scientist at Predictive Science in San Diego, California, previously predicted there was a 12% chance that Earth will be hit by a storm by 2020. He said: “Even if it’s off by a factor of two, that’s a much larger number than I thought. “Initially, I was quite surprised that the odds were so high, but the statistics appear to be correct. In 2015, the British Government published a report into the risks to the UK of severe space weather. It said an event such as a coronal mass ejection could wreak havoc across the world.</s>Despite overwhelming evidence that Earth is a spherical globe-shape, including both pictorial and video evidence, a third of young people believe that the Earth could be flat.

A survey carried out by YouGov which polled 8,215 US adults found that 84 percent believe that the Earth is round.

But that figure falls to just 66 percent of 18 to 24-year olds, a generation known as millennials, who are convinced convinced that the Earth is a globe.

Of the remaining millennials who took the survey, nine percent said they were recently having doubts that the Earth is round, five percent said they believed that the Earth is flat and the rest were unsure.</s>For most Americans, Earth Day is probably something you vaguely remember from elementary school. You may have sat through a lesson on reducing, reusing, and recycling, or made a poster with a frowny-faced Earth in art class. If your school was really ambitious, you might have had a bake sale and donated the proceeds to Save the Whales or Save the Rainforests. (My school was not particularly ambitious, so we’d usually watch Free Willy and call it a day.)

As an adult, you probably celebrate Earth Day the way you celebrate Flag Day: You don’t.

But Earth Day wasn’t always like this. Earth Day 2015 will likely be as fruitful as a gay stud horse, but the first Earth Day in 1970 gave birth to the modern environmental movement. Twenty million people, or one in 10 Americans, took to classrooms, auditoriums, and city streets to show their support for cleaning up the planet. The momentum from those early events led to the creation of the EPA and the passage of landmark laws like the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act. According to The New Yorker, the inaugural Earth Day “generated more than 12,000 events across the country, many of them in high schools and colleges, with more than 35,000 speakers. Today devoted ten hours of airtime to it. Congress took the day off, and two-thirds of its members spoke at Earth Day events.” Can you imagine that? The only event two-thirds of Congress would show up for these days is an open bar with a side of campaign contributions.

So why was the first Earth Day effective when the 45th promises to be just another day of feel-good fairs and corporate green-washing? Well, it was a different era. Back then, mass demonstrations actually made a difference, which was apparent from the successes of the anti-war and civil rights movements. Today, people still take to the streets — the People’s Climate March last fall brought out a record 400,000 activists — but political leaders are more willing to ignore them. And why is that? Well, are you rich? No? In that case, you just don’t matter that much.

In 1972, the presidential race cost just over $300 million (adjusted for today’s dollars). The 2012 presidential race cost over $2.6 billion, an increase of more than 860 percent, and the 2016 election will likely be the most expensive in history, with projections of up to $5 billion.

And where does that money come from? Rich people, corporations, special interest groups, and super PACs who buy influence and rarely prioritize the environment over profit.

In such a rigged system, Earth Day doesn’t stand a chance, and so this widely celebrated international phenomenon has lost its relevance. It is a Band-Aid, a pat on the back, a Facebook like. It’s dumping a bucket of ice water over your head for ALS or wearing a pink ribbon for breast cancer. It’s nothing more than a symbol. We don’t need Earth Day or Earth Month or even Earth Year: What we need is for those in power to stop working for industry and start working for the people.

How do we make this happen? Maybe we should turn to the recent developments out of Indiana for inspiration. Indiana Governor Mike Pence didn’t backtrack on the anti-gay Religious Freedom Restoration Act because people were holding gay rights drum circles — he did it because companies like Apple, Angie’s List, and Walmart threatened to take their business elsewhere. The financial pushback was swift, and so was the governor’s retraction. It’s terrifying: Big business may be the perpetrator of much of the world’s pollution, but it could also be the solution.

So don’t spend this Earth Day buying biodegradable balloons. Instead, climb the corporate ladder and use your perch to twist politicians’ arms. Make a billion dollars and donate it to candidates who actually want to fight climate change. Marry a venture capitalist and threaten to leave if he doesn’t divest from Big Oil. Become a lobbyist if you have to. Become president if you have to. There are things you can do to effect change in the world, but your Earth Day tote isn’t one of them.
Proxima Centauri b, an Earth-like exoplanet, is hit with a deadly superflare.