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posted by cmn32480 on Monday October 31 2016, @02:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the planets-around-video-games dept.

Computer simulations of the formation of planets orbiting in the habitable zones of low mass stars such as Proxima Centauri by astrophysicists at the University of Bern show that these planets are most likely to be roughly the size of the Earth and to contain large amounts of water.

In August 2016, the announcement of the discovery of a terrestrial exoplanet orbiting in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri stimulated the imagination of experts and the general public. This star is the nearest star to our sun, though it is 10 times less massive and 500 times less luminous. This discovery, together with the discovery in May 2016 of a similar planet orbiting an even lower-mass star (Trappist-1), convinced astronomers that such red dwarfs (as these low-mass stars are called) might be hosts to a large population of Earth-like planets.

Indeed, we already know that red dwarfs do have advanced civilizations.


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 31 2016, @09:11AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 31 2016, @09:11AM (#420816)

    We already know that red dwarfs are much more common than other stars, and that they live much longer. If red dwarfs commonly have Earth-like planets, it seems increasingly odd that we would find ourselves orbiting a class G star rather than a class M one. In fact, the Sun is very nearly as big as a star can be and still have a lifetime sufficient for us to have evolved. If it were even 25% more massive, it would have burned out by now, yet it is twice as massive as the largest red dwarf and many times more massive than the smallest, and the average tends toward the smaller side. Even if you assume that evolution could happen quite a bit faster than it did on Earth, there is just not that big of a mass range, among (relatively) large stars, where even accelerated evolution could happen. And faster evolution is problematic in its own right, as it just means that life, if it does arise, should go from oozing goo to technological civilization more quickly (and therefore more often).

    While it's of course possible that we could simply be outliers, it's less likely that we would be an outlier AND that life would be rare. It would be like winning the lottery with your first ticket, when in reality most people who win the lottery play it quite frequently.

    Yet, life, especially technological life, does seem to be rare. The more we know, the less we understand.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 31 2016, @10:07AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 31 2016, @10:07AM (#420818)

    60% of the stars observed in the Kepler Prime Mission were G-type.

    Even if only 15% of all stars aren't red dwarfs, that's still a lot of stars. The hotter stars may have a better chance of forming life and doing it more quickly than red dwarfs, along with wider habitable zones (AU from beginning to end of zone). Red dwarfs may have smaller protoplanetary disks, although that might help them produce Earth-sized rather than Jupiter-sized planets.

    Panspermia could still be on the table, but getting microbes from one solar system before the star explodes to a habitable planet in another solar system would be a feat.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 31 2016, @03:32PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 31 2016, @03:32PM (#420896)

    it seems increasingly odd that we would find ourselves orbiting a class G star rather than a class M one

    There's a lot that can go "wrong" around M stars: being tidally locked reduces surface area for advanced life, heavy radiation early in the star's life could burn away planet atmospheres, M stars are more variable, and give off light not friendly to photosynthesis. (It's possible some other kind of photosynthesis may be of use, but we don't know.)

    Perhaps they are ideal for eventual advanced life, if things work out right, but maybe not the quickest.