Atmosphere Stripping May Limit Habitability of Extrasolar Planets

Huge coronal mass ejections (CMEs) on the Sun produce extreme space weather effects at Earth. Models of solar CMEs have now been applied to M-dwarf and Sun-like stars — a popular target in the search for Earth-like exoplanets, in research published in the Astrophysical Journal (arXiv.org preprint). CMEs are gigantic clouds of solar plasma drenched [...]