(Image source: ZME Science)

BY: STEVEN SPARKMAN

Astro-physicists are now in the biz of predicting the weather -- on other planets orbiting other stars. They’ve created a new computer model showing what would happen if you stuck Jupiter in a giant blowtorch. ZME Science explains.

“There are few more dazzling sights in the world than that of the great Norther Lights, and in a exercise of brilliant imagination scientists have depicted how an aurorae would look like on huge hot planets." 

It’s part of an effort to understand space weather -- especially huge bursts of solar energy from what are called -- coronal mass ejections. Those are the bursts of charged gasses responsible for auroras on Earth -- and they can do a lot of damage to satellites in orbit.

The researchers wanted to know what impact these would have on other planets. So they modelled what are called “hot jupiters” -- gas giants orbiting close to their star -- getting blasted by the same forces. (Video source: Havard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

International Business Times reports what they found.

“The ripple effect would last over a course of about 6 hours, with the aurora 100-1000 times brighter than Earth's moving up and down from the equator toward the north and south poles rather than just restricted to the Polar Regions. In other words, it would be a planet wide show encompassing the entire exoplanetary atmosphere." 

The planet’s magnetic field was able to withstand the blast and protect the atmosphere. That means scientists looking for Earth-like planets might have been underestimating what an atmosphere can survive. And a writer for io9 says that’s not the only exciting thought from this research.

“What's cool is that this hot Jupiter closely resembles several exoplanets we've already found in orbit around other stars -- so one day, our space-faring descendants might actually witness this phenomenon in another solar system." 

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Transcript by Newsy.