Artist's impression of a nearby red dwarf
3rd December 2010
You’ve heard the quote “There’s more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth”. Well if you thought that was pretty astounding, then it now looks like we need another two planets full of beaches !!
It all comes down to red dwarfs, smaller cooler, and longer living stars than our Sun. That’s longer living than our star’s predicted 10 billion year life span. These cooler redder guys burn more slowly, steadily, and emit a more feeble light of around one ten thousanth that of the Sun.
But astronomers have now realised that older elliptical galaxies may contain 20 times more red dwarf stars than more younger star systems such as our Milky Way. This means the cosmos could contain an incredible three times the number of stars than was originally thought. This is all good news for the possibility of extraterrestrial life, as this development vastly increases the number of suns that could be warming living alien worlds. But it’s not just the sheer number of red dwarfs that’s important, but their long life. Planets orbiting a star that will live well in excess of 10 billion years have bags of time and then some to get life started, evolved, and who knows what…even developed into intelligent civilisations? Ok that’s just speculation, but if nothing else this new discovery means the Earth-like exoplanet population could literally be trillions.
There’s so much exciting science of late, arsenic life forms, possible Earth like exoplanets, Europa, Titan, Enceladus, and now three times the number of stars that we ever thought now inhabit this universe. The signs all seem to be pointing in one direction, more and more places where life could be living, thriving, and evolving.
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