OREANDA-NEWS. American scientists have discovered regular flares in one of the stars closest to us - GJ 887. This means that the planets revolving around it are unlikely to be habitable. These research findings were published in the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society.

The star GJ 887 (Lacaille 9352) is located in the constellation Pisces South, just 10 light-years from the Sun. It is one of the closest and brightest stars in the sky to Earth.

It belongs to the most common stellar class M - low-mass red dwarfs, around which, according to astronomers, most of the planets in our Galaxy revolve. And it is in the vicinity of such stars that astronomers and astrobiologists are looking for signs of life.

Recently, the TESS space telescope of NASA's exoplanet search mission discovered two or three planets in the habitable zone of GJ 887. That is, on their surface, liquid water can be present and life can exist. But all this is provided that the star itself is calm, because strong and frequent flares - emissions of bubbling gas emanating from some stars, "blow off" the atmosphere from young planets and make the origin of life on them impossible.

And each such flare bombards nearby planets with a shower of fast-moving particles, creating magnetic storms and increasing the likelihood that the atmospheres of the planets will be destroyed.