The Star That Flared Like a Lightbulb express
In 2023, an unremarkable star in the constellation Taurus suddenly became dozens of times brighter. The behavior was like a lightbulb someone abruptly turned up to maximum: the star flared, then gradually returned to its previous state.
Astronomers caught the moment and pointed several telescopes at the star. They saw a disk of gas and dust swirling around it, like a whirlpool above a bathtub drain. Normally, material from the disk flows toward the star in a thin stream, but sometimes, as in a clogged pipe, a clump accumulates and suddenly falls inward. That clump caused the flare.
The star itself turned out to be small and cool: its temperature is about 3400 degrees, and its mass is less than a third of the Sun's. But even such a modest star can put on a bright show. After the flare, astronomers noticed a wind blowing from the star — streams of gas carrying some material back into the disk. It's as if the bathtub not only filled up but also splashed a bit.
Such flares are not rare for young stars. They show how a star gains mass and how its surroundings behave in the process. Perhaps it is precisely at such moments that clumps form in the disk, from which planets will later assemble.
The rate at which the star consumed material during the flare was about 2.38×10⁻⁷ solar masses per year. That sounds small, but for a star with a third of the Sun's mass, it's like eating a small asteroid every few days.
In Stanisław Lem's novel 'Solaris', the planet's ocean behaves unpredictably, much like the accretion flares of young stars — except there the mystery lies in a mind, while here it lies in physics.