Solar flares and stellar flares hit differently

The sun is not only our closest stellar neighbor, it’s also the star we understand the most. As we’ve observed it over the centuries, we’ve learned that the sun is not an immortal constant. It goes through active and quiet cycles, it has become warmer over geologic time scales, and it occasionally batters Earth with solar flares. We’ve generally thought that other main sequence stars behave in much the same way, but when it comes to solar flares, that isn’t always true.