NASA's Kepler spacecraft has observed superflares

NASA's Kepler spacecraft has observed superflares on Sun-like stars thousands of times larger than the solar flares produced by our own Sun. Brad Schaefer points out that a similar superflare on our Sun could have disastrous consequences for us on Earth. Two 2000 papers by Schaefer suggested that superflares could be caused by interactions of stellar magnetic field lines with nearby planets, although this is not confirmed by the recent Kepler observations.