Magnetic Interaction of a Super-CME with the Earth's Magnetosphere: Scenario for Young Earth

TL;DR

This study simulates how extremely powerful super-CMEs could interact with Earth's magnetosphere, revealing potential impacts on early Earth's environment and biological systems.

Contribution

It presents the first 3D magnetohydrodynamic simulation of super-CME interactions with Earth's magnetosphere, exploring their potential effects on early Earth.

Findings

Global magnetospheric structure is significantly perturbed by super-CMEs.

Open-closed magnetic field boundary shifts during super-CME impact.

Energetic particle fluxes could have affected early Earth's biosphere.

Abstract

Solar eruptions, known as Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), are frequently observed on our Sun. Recent Kepler observations of superflares on G-type stars have implied that so called super-CMEs, possessing kinetic energies 10 times of the most powerful CME event ever observed on the Sun, could be produced with a frequency of 1 event per 800-2000 yr on solar-like slowly rotating stars. We have performed a 3D time-dependent global magnetohydrodynamic simulation of the magnetic interaction of such a CME cloud with the Earth's magnetosphere. We calculated the global structure of the perturbed magnetosphere and derive the latitude of the open-closed magnetic field boundary. We also estimated energy fluxes penetrating the Earth's ionosphere and discuss the consequences of energetic particle fluxes on biological systems on early Earth.