Superflares from the Sun May Have Sparked Life by Warming Earth

"That means Earth should have been an icy ball," study lead author Vladimir Airapetian, a solar scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement. The scientists analyzed observations made by NASA's Kepler space telescope, which hunts for exoplanets by looking for the tiny brightness dips these worlds cause when they cross their host stars' faces.