Proxima Centauri, a star four light-years from the sun, shoots out a violent solar flare in this artist's depiction. Proxima Centauri, a star four light-years from the sun, shoots out a violent solar flare in this artist's depiction. Credit: NSF / AUI / NSF NRAO / S. Dagnello Only a few years ago, astronomers heralded the discovery of a rocky world circling the sun 's closest space neighbor, Proxima Centauri. The star, just four light-years away, is known as a red dwarf , or M-type, and is quite different from Earth's own. Although the exoplanet , Proxima b, orbits extremely close — a year there is only 11 Earth-days — its star's relatively smaller size and lower temperature could mean this world has the right conditions for liquid water to pool on its surface. But a new study may have dashed scientists' hopes that the alien world could support life. The star's flares are much more violent than previously thought, the researchers say, potentially obliterating the planet's air. Not having an atmosphere, which traps important gases like oxygen and water vapor, may render a planet uninhabitable, even if it were otherwise an Earth doppelganger. "Our Sun's activity doesn't remove Earth's atmosphere and instead causes beautiful auroras because we have a thick atmosphere and a strong magnetic field to protect our planet," said Meredith MacGregor of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, one of the authors, in a statement . "But Proxima Centauri's flares are much more powerful." SEE ALSO: Webb telescope captures weird auroras on Neptune for…