Abstract:
The Kepler Space Telescope has brought major advances in the study of exoplanets by producing photometric light curves of stars with high precision. One important byproduct has to do with the discovery of super flares in 2012 that were detected in some stars with energies many orders of magnitude larger than the greatest solar flares ever observed. In this talk we will give an overview covering some of the major steps in our understanding of the physical nature of the flare effects and the rotation-age-activity relation of low-mass stars. The super flares and the related stellar outflows and radiation could have important implications on the atmospheric evolution of exoplanets and their habit- ability and thus are certainly scientific topics of interest for future observations.