Red dwarfs are the most common type of star in the Universe. Its flare now makes potentially Earth-like worlds uninhabitable, but we have to wait.
October 28, 2025
Here on Earth, life began very early after the formation of our planet: at least 3.8 billion years ago and possibly even earlier. 2.7 billion years ago, it had developed photosynthesis. A little later, aerobic respiration developed, followed by eukaryotic cells, multicellularity, and sexual reproduction. More than 500 million years ago, the first fungi, plants and animals appeared, giving rise to a planet whose continents and oceans were invaded by large, complex and differentiated organisms. With the arrival of humans, Earth has become a planet dominated by an intelligent, technologically advanced species, on the verge of even being a space species.
With so many other planets in the Universe, it seems inevitable that there are other worlds where similar successes have occurred. However, our Sun is relatively rare among stars, with lower-mass red dwarf stars far outnumbering stars like ours. Although almost all of the Earth-sized worlds we’ve found so far orbit these small, low-mass, low-luminosity red dwarf stars, none of them show evidence of having life on them…
#Red #dwarfs #uninhabitable #simply #impatient #Ethan #Siegel #Start #bang #October
