Stars, Planets, and the Weather: if You Don't Like It Wait Five Billion Years (Abstract)

Volume 40 number 1 (2012)

Jeremy J. Drake

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138; Jdrake@cfa.harvard.edu

Abstract

(Abstract only) Over the last decade realization has grown that high-energy phenomena such as X-ray and EUV radiation, winds, and coronal mass ejections exhibited by stars like our own Sun have an importance far beyond local “stellar weather.” From the stormy magnetic extremes of stellar youth to the gentle breeze of stellar middle age and beyond, I describe how stellar weather is now central to problems as diverse as the evolution of supernova Type Ia progenitor candidates, planet formation, and the development and survival of life in planetary systems