Apparently, the Sun is a little less active than hundreds of similar stars from our galaxy. We might understand why life exists in the solar system.
The Sun, just like all the stars, is basically a ball with plasma. From the surface, there are magnetic field lines emerging, which can cause dark patches, which are known as sunspots. If the activity of these magnetic fields is turned up, we can get even more solar storms throwing deadly charged particles and radiation in the solar system. If some of these hit a rocky planet, then the planet might end up burned, and nothing could live on them.
So you’re probably asking yourself how we are still alive. A study that was released on Thursday shows that our Sun is tame if we are to compare it with its brothers. It also shows that hundreds of other stars, just like our Sun, have five times more magnetic activity than our Sun. The Sun is softer, which is a good thing for us.
Astronomers have kept track of the sunspots for a very long time, coming up with a proxy for solar activity. Some studies have also implied that the Sun is also quieter than similar stars. Pieces of evidence have also shown that the level activity of the Sun is regular for a star of that size.
Timo Reinhold, who is an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen, in Germany, stated: This triggered the question: ‘Is the sun a real sun-like star?’
Scientists have looked at the data collected by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, which gathered data about 150,000 stars in the Milky Way for about four years.
Stars just like our Sun has regular cycles, in which spots cross their surfaces with either greater or less frequency. Our Sun’s cycle lasts about 11 Earth years.