I love space, I have since I was a kid but I’m not a professional by any means. All my knowledge comes from years of watching documentaries, reading space/science magazines, and looking things up on wikipedia/stack exchange etc.

Red Dwarfs are thought to be the most common types of stars in the universe, but despite that they’re generally thought to be a poor choice for life to evolve. From what I’ve read, this is because planets orbiting in the habitable zone are close enough to be most likely tidally locked, and on top of that, it’s thought that Red Dwarf stars have powerful and frequent flares.

Red Dwarfs are thought to have even more powerful flares than our own Sun, despite being significantly less massive than our parent star. Why is this? What causes a star with a potential mass as low as 0.08 solar masses to have such powerful and frequent flares? Why do more massive stars not have comparatively more massive flares?

I’ve also read that TOI-700 is thought to be a fairly stable Red Dwarf, as in it doesn’t seem to flare up the way a lot of other Red Dwarfs are thought to do. What are the possible causes for this discrepancy in flare activity among Red Dwarf stars? Why is it thought that Red Dwarfs are generally quite grumpy and emit a lot of powerful flares?

  • Person264@lemmings.worldEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    Flares are related to the complex magnetic fields of stars. Since red dwarfs are more compact, I can imagine that the magnetic field also being more compact will result in it being more messy, especially if its strength doesn’t scale with the star’s size. The more chaotic magnetic field would result in more flares/more violent flares.