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According to scientists, this eruption was powerful enough to “destroy the atmospheres of any unlucky planets in its path.”

ESA explained that the event was a coronal mass ejection (CME), similar to those frequently observed on the Sun. During such an event, large amounts of stellar material are expelled, filling the surrounding space.

The agency’s statement continued: “These dramatic outbursts shape and drive space weather, much like the dazzling auroras we see on Earth, and can erode the atmospheres of nearby planets. But although coronal mass ejections are common on the Sun, until now we had not been able to detect one convincingly on another star.”

Joe Callingham of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), lead author of the new study published in *Nature*, said: “Astronomers have been wanting to detect a coronal mass ejection on another star for decades. Previous findings hinted at their presence or pointed towards them, but did not definitively confirm that material was escaping into space. Now, for the first time, we have done that.”

As a coronal mass ejection travels through a star’s outer layers and into interplanetary space, it generates a shockwave and an associated burst of radio waves (a form of light). Joe and his colleagues detected this short, intense radio signal and traced it back to a star located about 130 light-years away.

Callingham added: “This kind of radio signal cannot exist unless the material has completely escaped the star’s strong magnetic bubble. In other words, it must be caused by a coronal mass ejection.”

The star that launched the material is classified as a “red dwarf” – a type of star that is much dimmer, cooler and smaller than the Sun. “It looks nothing like our star,” he explained. “It has about half the Sun’s mass, spins 20 times faster and has a magnetic field some 300 times stronger. Most of the planets we know of in the Milky Way orbit stars of this kind.”

According to ESA, the radio signal was detected using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope, thanks to new data-processing techniques developed by Cyril Tasse and Philippe Zarka of Observatoire de Paris-PSL:

“The team then used ESA’s XMM-Newton to determine the star’s temperature, rotation and brightness in X-ray light. This was crucial for interpreting the radio signal and understanding what was really going on.”