Posted on 10/20/2018 3:46:21 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The most common type of star in the galaxy is the red dwarf star. None of these small, dim stars can be seen from Earth with the naked eye, but they can emit flares far more powerful than anything our Sun emits. Two astronomers using the Hubble space telescope saw a red dwarf star give off a powerful type of flare called a superflare. That’s bad news for any planets in these stars’ so-called habitable zones.
Red dwarfs make up about 75% of the stars in the Milky Way, so they probably host many exoplanets. In fact, scientists think most of the planets that are in habitable zones are orbiting red dwarfs. But the more astronomers observe these stars, the more they’re becoming aware of just how chaotic and energetic it can be in their neighbourhoods. That means we might have to re-think what habitable zone means.
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The age of the star is part of the superflare phenomena. Younger stars, particularly those in the first one hundred million years of their lives, exhibit more flaring activity than intermediate and old age stars. And it’s possible that this flaring occurs daily.
“This means that we’re looking at superflares happening every day or even a few times a day.” – Parke Loyd, Arizona State University.
Young red dwarfs emit so much energy, that their superflares are powerful enough to shred the atmosphere of any planets in their habitable zones. Many of these planets might be tidally locked to their red dwarf star, another condition that makes life on these exoplanets a very challenging prospect. But since most habitable zone exoplanets in our galaxy are orbiting red dwarfs, it’s important to study the interactions between planet and star.
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
Trump’s fault?
If Obama was still President, every planet in every galaxy would be paradise.
I wonder how far away and how long ago this happened. I searched the article for light years but didn’t get any hits.
Not sure why red dwarfs are theoretically more likely to have habitable exoplanets. Our own sun and our very existence seems to belie that.
——— Younger stars . . . exhibit more flaring activity [sic] than intermediate and old age stars. And it’s possible that this flaring [sic] occurs daily ———
Indicating that life across the cosmos is pretty much the same……
A Gamma Ray Burst is something powerful enough to kill all life in systems not only in the system of the star, but in the surrounding region. They don't occur much, but galaxies have so many stars in their center regions that it is unlikely for life to exist there due to Gamma Ray Bursts. This eliminates 90% of all stars as places where life like ours would evolve.
Our best defense against these would be to spread out into multiple systems. We can even colonize the most dense parts of the galaxy, but it would come at the cost of periodically losing the entire populations of star systems.
Couple this with this article about red dwarfs, and now probably 95% of all star systems are uninhabitable.
Exactly
By the time we can observe these things then many of them happened hundreds or thousands of years ago. We really have no idea what things look like there today.
WOW!!!
Holly miscalculated something.
Ace Rimmer back in time and in action.
The biggest bummer of bad news for the Universe is that ideal human conditions are very uncommon.
It would have been awesome if common human traits existed everwhere like 70 degrees, abundant water and no snow.
Sadly the opposite is true.
Rim’mer, “the way you say my name makes it sound like a toilet cleaning product”.
Red Dwarf, loved that show.
Red Dwarf, loved that show.
I blame the chicken vindaloo.
. . . I blame the curry.
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