Can Life Exist Around Red Dwarf Stars?

Red Dwarfs will be the longest living stars in the Universe. Many of them have planetary systems, like the famous Trappist-1. But there is a big problem, as red dwarfs can emit mega-flares which could render planets uninhabitable. Finding out, if there is any hope for finding life and how can we study red dwarfs better with Dr Ward Howard.
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00:00 Intro
01:31 How bad are red dwarf flares
16:28 How to solve the flares problem
21:43 Lifecycle of red dwarfs and their planets
30:02 Any hope for life?
35:25 Brown dwarf
36:40 Our place in the Universe
41:21 Future of explanatory research
More interviews:
👉 With Dr Jessie Christiansen • The Mysterious Gap In ...
👉 With Dr Ben Hord • The Future of Exoplane...
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[@angelainamarie9656]

When I was a kid Cosmos was about the only thing that we had for good science content on TV and I remember watching Carl Sagan give a demonstration of finding a planet by watching the light of the star dim and finding a planet by watching the star wobble. And I remember him saying to those kids who were all about my age "when you're my age you will know for all the nearest Stars whether or not there are planets." And I love to think that people who are in the early part of their life now will know by the time they're my age whether or not there's life on those planets. It's absolutely wild that in my lifetime we have gone from no known exoplanets to 5,000.

[@researcher707]

I think it will be sooner then you think! JWST now and what will that discover? Science is compounding faster and faster.🔑

[@koriw1701]

What an intriguing thought!..I too saw the original 13 episodes of Cosmos by Carl Sagan on PBS in 1980. I was just into my final year of high school and it was right at the time that hard science and hard SciFi books had grabbed my attention and my heart away from the endless nonsense on commercial TV. Some of my fondest memories are how everyone was trying their best approximate Sagan's Brooklyn accent as he would say "It's All out there, biwwions and biwwions of miles...all in the Cosmos..." (his use of the word "billions," in his tight Brooklyn accent) His was a mind we all miss. In fact, Carl Sagan's Cosmos, was the most viewed program on PBS for the forty years it took for Downton Abbey to succeed it. The world lost a great man when Sagan died of bone marrow cancer in 1996. It was he who founded 'SETI' (The Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) and it is still functional today that has yearly operational costs on par with NASA that is supported by public and private donations.

[@terminusest5902]

Is our understanding of the universe accelerating. It seems that nearly every day we discover new questions. There is so much more partial information.

[@76rjackson]

I seem to recall that they've already found an exoplanet around a star in another galaxy.

[@Raz.C]

Yeah, when I was a kid, we had a local TV show called _Beyond 2000._ Back then, the year 2,000 was still almost 30 years away... The segments were so enthralling and the future was filled with so much promise that I can remember thinking that each episode was very similar to a Star Trek episode happening in real life. The show would cover both the most recent technological updates/ breakthroughs, as well as using that data to extrapolate and hypothesise about the future, beyond the year 2,000. Even though their 'predictions' were largely idealistic, the future turned out to be FAR more productive. So much so that if we were to watch some of these episodes today, we'd be underwhelmed with their imagination, finding that most of their 'predictions' were fulfilled in the late 80s/ early 90s... They tried rebooting the TV show back in the early noughties (around 2005, I think), calling it _Beyond Tomorrow,_ since it was already some years beyond the year 2,000. As I recall, it was disappointing. It was almost as depressing as its predecessor was inspiring...

[@animistchannel]

Wonderful conversation! Also, I really liked having your closing comments/summation at the end while the credits rolled off to the side. Great production choice! Yes, we tune in for the expertise of your interviewees; but as a long-time overviewer of the field, your own thoughts on the process of the process, as it were, are also greatly valued. At this point, your own perspectives on the state of the field are entirely valuable content as well.

[@annoyed707]

This reinforces the importance of K type stars.

[@douglaswilkinson5700]

K dwarfs (i.e. main sequence) also emit powerful flares that produce x-rays & high-energy UV. Planets must orbit closer to K dwarfs than G dwarfs to be in their habitable zone exposing them this dangerous radiation. So K dwarfs have drawbacks that also must be considered.

[@maxmanlyman2438]

Amazing interview as always, thank you Fraser I always enjoy the depth of your 1h long interviews. One thing I find troubling with the whole ozone layer depletion, sterilizing uvc radiation narrative is that when we consider: earths primordial atmosphere and second atmosphere did not contain significant amounts of oxygen and therefore could not contribute to any ozone layer, yet life still flourished and let to the ancestors of cyanobacteria generate oxygen and subsequently led to the build-up of an ozone layer. How does this fit together. Maybe this question could be addressed in one of your upcoming question answers. Much appreciated, thank you!

[@Tayken9127]

If red dwarfs aren't habitable, at least not yet (they may calm down in their old age, the universe just isn't old enough yet), then it could go a long way to solving the Fermi Paradox or at least ameliorating it!

[@doncarlodivargas5497]

If they can burn for trillions of years and you wait for them to get older you have more patience than I have, I can not wait that long

[@ianmatthews7385]

Especially if you're a species that can reorganize a star system to suit your needs.

[@DneilB007]

One big part of the Fermi paradox solution is, I think, that we on Earth are something like 90-95th percentile of possible gravity values that make the rocket equation solvable, but we’re also on the lighter side of optimal mass for life formation, according to what I’ve seen. If both of these conditions hold true, then the logical conclusion is that over 50% of the species that might be out there are not able to achieve escape velocity from their home planet with chemical rockets. If that’s true, then why would they want to develop a more efficient propulsion technology to leave their planet when they cannot take the intermediate step of a chemical rocket?

[@nerufer]

you might have missed it in the interview but it was clearly said that hoping for old age red dwarfs is useless since it will have "burned" away all the materials on exoplanets before ot gets calm enough. it doesn't get replenished.

[@annoyed707]

No volcanic outgassing?

[@drwaynebuck]

Please interview olivia lim!

[@cafaque]

Holy cow, this kid is amazing. good job Dr Howard!

[@asafoster7954]

People look so young these days, I wouldn't be surprised if this gentleman was 36. Although I assume they are a little younger than that haha

[@CokeCheese]

in a few decades, Red Dwarf stars have gone from potentially the best place to find life, to, can life even exist around them? I'm guessing there is a miniscule green zone around the outer boundaries of older, less active Red Dwarfs. The world would likely be cold, but potentially green and possibly not tidally locked. Ideally speaking.

[@realzachfluke1]

Yeah, it's totally crazy. And the prospective planets you mention might not even be green like our world, but rather something like _black_ due to the kinds of wavelengths coming off these M-dwarf stars. My biggest concern is definitely the tidal locking risk, but the craziest thing is, complete tidal locking might not even be the worst configuration. Some planets close, but not that close to red dwarf stars (like the hypothetical ones you mention at the edge of the habitable zones) might end up in a 3:2 resonance, which sounds fine compared to having one side of your planet always in daylight, but in reality would create *extreme* tides that could be more than a slight inconvenience for any life trying to develop or hold on in that environment lol.

[@ambientoccluser]

But as far I know, red dwarfs have extremelly slow lifespan. They are practically ALL in their infancy considering their presumed life will last for tens of billions of years for the biggest red dwarfs (and in the early universe there practically hasn't been red dwarfs, since the overal density was mush higher so only supergiants were produced and died of quickly); to the smallest ones that will have lifetimes of trillions of years. And Proxima Centaury mentioned in video is among smallest and old about as our Sun; max 5 billion years... so the predicted lifespan in the main sequence is about mindboggling four trillion years. I doubt it'll settle off superflaring anytime soon.

[@Roguescienceguy]

A big exomoon orbiting a neptunelike planet further inside the "habitable" zone would be a good candidate for life actually. It would not have his atmosphere blown away by the star because it will spend most of its time inside the magnetosphere of set planet. Radiation would be rather high there and Red dwarfs don't have many gasgiants circling around them to begin with. Rocky planets and mini neptunes are the standard. Just because of the lack of material to form such an asortment of planets, the probability for such a system to exist is very slim. K, G and F-type stars are probably the most likely candidates for life. Stars like Gliese 902, Gliese 169 and definitely Zeta reticuli are worth observing. I for one, would love to see JWST have a go at the Zeta binary. Granted, it will be tough to resolve any data, but it would be amazing to see a starsystem that kinda resembles a young version of our own star. Zeta 2 still has a protoplanetary disk around it and Zeta 1 probably has one too, but that hasn't been confirmed yet. Both stars are old enough to just about have single celled organisms in the oceans of potential earthlike planets orbiting them in case there are such planets inside the habitable zone.

[@rJaune]

A planet with an atmosphere would be able to exist closer to the frost line.

[@Prof.Megamind.thinks.about.it.]

​@bertdemeulemeester Mr. B. , These planets would be too close to host star ; the gravitational interactions would destabilize the orbit of the Earth-sized planet . Also , the stellar radiation is likely profoundly mitigated by the cone shape of the radiation- emissions from the poles of fully-convective stellar bodies . 😮 *Ref.: 34m. of above video .

[@arminwalland]

Wow I think this is one of the most interesting interviews I have seen on this channel. Really enjoyable to watch!

[@SeaTacDelta]

This was a great interview. Audio was fantastic as well. Thanks, other guests should use this as an example of excellent guest audio. This made it enjoyable to listen to.

[@frasercain]

I'm a lot more strict about audio. I've even bought guests microphones.

[@SeaTacDelta]

@@frasercain Thanks Fraser. The improvement is noticeable. Well worth it for these longer form interviews.

[@Roguescienceguy]

Doctor Howard you got my two thumbs up for the clear explanation. It frustrated me to no avail that scientists were hyping up earthlike planets around red dwarfs. The probability for life around red dwarfs in the habitable zone is damn near zero. A large moon circling a neptunelike planet at the outer edge of the habitable zone might harbour some simple lifeforms though. That's why Doctor Kipping is soo passionate about exomoons f.e. Fraser, the dimethylsulfidedetection had a sigma of 1,5. Shouldn't even been mentioned actually.

[@douglaswilkinson5700]

Dr. Kipping is excellent. He has a lecture on "Cool Worlds Classroom" that's quite interesting.

[@vhhawk]

Loved this interview. Thanks for it.

[@lurkst3r]

loved this interview, Doc Howard was fascinating!

[@nerufer]

haha, patience for decades yes, but please in our lifetime. All in all this interview gave me hope. Because I thought the Trappist 1 data was already collected and wasn't what we all hoped for, and that was why we hadnt heared anything yet. After hearing this interview im not so sure its that, but rather its more in the realm of; its really hard to give an accurate enough result to the public. We don't want another Venus phosphine maybe result. Btw, I had my hopes on Trappist1-e, but he kept mentioning g. I thought that was surprising. Thnx Fraser for the excellent and timely interview on Trappist 1!

[@MrAluntus]

great interview, Fraser - thanks

[@BlueNeonBeasty]

this was such a fascinating interview 💚

[@karlputz6721]

Are you and JMG the same person, just doing back-to-back interviews for different channels? I think this is the second in a row!

[@Walamo]

excellent interview!

[@rJaune]

Again with the great interviews! Besides, flares, exomoons, and new telescope quirks, is there anything else that can hamper a clean exoplanet signal?

[@rionbuss]

This is awesome research 🤓

[@jamesw5713]

Super interesting, this guy was good! (Ward)

[@frasercain]

Glad you enjoyed it.

[@douglaswilkinson5700]

"Dwarf" does *not* mean "small" star. It means the star is a *main sequence* star i.e. it is fusing hydrogen in its core (luminosity class *V*.) The most massive (97.8 times the mass of our Sun), largest, hottest and most luminous main sequence star is BI253 (qv bi253) is a dwarf: O2V. Originally main sequence stars were called dwarfs compared to the giant size they would become when they evolve off the main seqence. ("An Introduction to Stellar Astrophysics" by Francis LeBlanc, Wiley 2010; "Oxford Dictionary Astronomy" by Ian Ridpath, 2nd edition revised 2012)

[@fluffysheap]

That's sort of true (and sort of not, because stars with more than about 10 solar masses are still often referred to as giants regardless of what part of their life cycle they are in), but when discussing red dwarfs, they are definitely all small stars.

[@xitheris1758]

Everyone in the US is feeling the squeeze right now. No surprise that NASA is also financially strapped. I hope they can find a way.

[@I.amthatrealJuan]

Fraser asked the questions I would have liked to ask within the first five minutes. Very nice

[@CaliforniaBushman]

Most Earth Mass & higher exoplanets could have much thicker (Venus Density) atmospheres. Earth's being very thin, giving Trappist D - H... radius orbits around larger (0.3+Solar Mass) Red Dwarfs a much better chance of survival.

[@jadesea562]

This was wonderful 💜💙🖤💙💜

[@ajcross7]

He asked if you were a Star Wars fan 😂😂

[@ozne_2358]

I remember an interesting proposal a while back where the flares were used as a LIDAR to detect planets around these stars. Basically, with a flare, a star brightens and, some time later it reaches other planets in the solar system. So you get the main event, followed by much smaller reflections of the flare on the planets. I think you needed to be in space though to be precise enough.

[@frasercain]

Hmm, I'll see if I can find the paper.

[@ozne_2358]

@@frasercain It was discussed in the blog Centauri Dreams, probably 1-2 years ago

[@alexanderi1105]

@@frasercain Question: What why doesn’t anyone talk about k class stars, uknow orange dwarfs they seem like a good intermediately between G and M class stars

[@abstractedaway]

There's some talk that red dwarf binaries would tidally lock and that this would moderate their magnetic fields and thus flare activity. Has that held up to evidence? What would that allow for in terms of habitable planets?

[@prawnmikus]

Would a planet need to be so close to the star pair to be in the habitable zone that a three-body type interaction could eat/eject it?

[@rickrutledge9363]

It's refreshing to see scientists that wait for the proof to come in rather than taking other "smart" people's opinions. That's actual science.

[@bbbenj]

Thanks 👍

[@BitcoinMeister]

Dr. Howard pulling off a nice double header! Event Horizon and now this channel!

[@frasercain]

JMG and I are clearly scanning the same places for people. :-)

[@karlpk3907]

Great interview, Fraser, of Howell who comes across as both extremely knowledgeable and personable. I bet he is a great teacher. Of course Howell underscores the key problem in astrophysics, cosmology and exoplanet research: too many great thoughtful ideas, not enough resources. David Kipping of the Cool Worlds channel, and a true KZbin star, did a brief vid on his team’s proposal for time on JWST being rejected. You ought to have him on your podcast. As for Howell, I wish him luck. But he’s right most likely: Mom and Dad are probably going to say no.

[@damlic11]

To what precision do we know the positions of active functioning satelites in LEO and GEO? I assume there is a range - gps probably we know very precisely, if you could speak about how that super precise positioning is obtained that would be interesting! Thanks!

[@fluffysheap]

Extremely. They are tracked by radar (as are the dead ones) precisely enough so they can move to avoid collisions. The position is known to within a few meters.

[@protocol6]

Seems to be a bit of a bias towards land-based life when people talk about this subject. If it has water, which we think is necessary anyway, that's one heck of a good radiation shield. Though I do personally think that life underwater has a serious disadvantage when it comes to developing much in the way of technology.

[@gaunterodimm3606]

28:30 Yeah, maybe there might not be enough comet fall at that point to replenish an atmosphere but a close pass by of another star could be enough to perturb an oort cloud to change that. Which potentially happened in the past to the sun and at least one time in the distant(not long in stellar terms) future, Gliese 710. So it's a possibility since in the vastness of the universe it's something that can happen often, if only maybe relatively unusual.

[@bartolomeestebanmurillo4459]

Life always finds a way. There might be microbial life or life that evolved ways to avoid the constant flares.

[@doncarlodivargas5497]

If we/astronomers have found ~5.000 planets? How many of them have been orbiting stable, non-flaring stars? And if the ratio between stars/planets are ~1:1, does that mean we/astronomers have checked ~5.000 stars?

[@douglaswilkinson5700]

No Earth-size planet around a G dwarf -- like our Sun -- has been found. None.

[@doncarlodivargas5497]

@@douglaswilkinson5700 - I am no mathematician, but in my opinion, this is the interesting part, I understand it is difficult to spot planets, and it is impressive we do it at all, but it is a bit strange to me we have no "earth 2.0" kind of

[@douglaswilkinson5700]

​@@doncarlodivargas5497The Kepler Space Telescope might have detected Earth sized planets but its designers assumed that the noise level of other spectral type G dwarfs was like our Sun's. They were wrong. We have a far quieter Sun. So stellar astrophysicists could not differentiate between the noise-- e.g. sunspots -- and (small) Earth-size planets.

[@ericpetersen8407]

Augmented electrical fields put in Lagrange places between the planet and the star. That’s my idea for March, we can scale it to work with the magnetic field planet and if that’s the case there’s less of a chance that we are breaking ethical rules of destroying other lifeforms

[@jonathanhughes8679]

The truth of the Fermi paradox are a few issues. Red dwarfs are normally tidally locked and they just are not good candidates for life, especially really advanced life. Secondly as fermi asked “where are they then” I’m betting that space is really, really, truly hard to navigate and spread across. So looking for life like us is probably not going to be found around dwarfs. Lastly Sun like G Dwarfs and then our best hope is probably larger planets with moons because that opens a huge range to look for life habitable places.

[@jackdowling4606]

What impact would this have on tidally locked planets?

[@chrisbourne3543]

I’m sorry what is your website? Has your latest paper come out?

[@frasercain]

Here's Ward's website www.wardshowardastronomer.com/

[@israeldiegoriveragenius2th164]

Both heads are missing atmospheres.

[@extropian314]

And your avatar appears to be missing its crust!

[@element5377]

it seems that simultaneous multi spectral wide array (IR, visible, UV, X-ray) observations will eventually become standard, simply because of the huge synergy and orders of magnitude of increases of knowledge gathered, not just for now, but for later, far more rich, analysis of the data further augmented by AI and quantum computing and their improved models. is all EM spectra (god-like) observation possible theoretically?

[@AEFisch]

Does it make no sense to try and send these ultra fast micro devices to explore Proxima? Should we seek a farther target in spite of the time factor?

[@rJaune]

Would there be a lot of tectonic activity in a TRAPPIST-like planet? That could cause outgassing.

[@froobas]

High tectonic activity is possible, but red dwarves seem content to strip away the atmospheres of nearby planets ad-nauseum.

[@Johnny-Presents]

I have two questions: What kind of star has the least flairs through its life? Do scientists pay for time on JWST and HST? Or is it all public and government funding?

[@brick6347]

Well, we do know life can exist around G Type stars, so that's where I'd focus my energy. Except finding terrestrial planets around G type stars is really, really hard. Red dwarfs really don't seem like the optimal place to look, apart from being easier to look at perhaps. But at the end of the day, we have a minuscule sample of the galaxy so who really knows!

[@douglaswilkinson5700]

Do you have examples of other G dwarfs that host life?

[@Raz.C]

That can SEEM like a good idea (focus on Type-G stars), however, it's not without its problems. Chief among these being Type-M stars are thousands of times more common than Type-G stars. Also, a typical Type-G star has about a maximum of 8 billion years during which time it's stable enough to support the evolution of life on orbiting planets. A typical Red Dwarf, on the other hand, has tens of billions of years to do the same thing.

[@douglaswilkinson5700]

​@@Raz.COn the other hand the proximity of planets to a spectral type M main sequence star's habitable zone exposes them to such powerful flares that generate x-rays and high-energy ultraviolet EM radiation that can strip planets of their atmospheres.

[@jeremysart]

Bummer to hear the argument leaning back toward earth like atmospheres forming on rocky planets around red dwarfs being less likely … seeing as how they are so abundant and life for SO long. I want to believe!

[@douglaswilkinson5700]

In astrophysics 6σ independently verifiable evidence counts. Belief -- not so much.

[@chrisbourne3543]

Do you know about the new radio telescope they’re building in Australia

[@dustman96]

Could life evolve to be nuclear powered, to use atomic energy?

[@ganymedemlem6119]

There are photothrphic fungi that have been found within the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

[@mnrvaprjct]

@@ganymedemlem6119that’s not atomic energy, those fungi undergo chemosynthesis to make energy.

[@ganymedemlem6119]

@@mnrvaprjct, was that revised? I thought they had found organisms with extra high melanin levels and were getting energy from the absorption of high energy photons decaying out of the fallout?

[@petersvancarek]

I would say, the red dwarfs should slower their rotation faster due to their smaller size(and mass) which allows the planets to slow them faster. But- M dwarfs are basically naked stellar cores- meaning, they are fully convective. I think this is the main cause for flaring. Orange stars and heavier are not fully convective. They have layers which are relatively isolated.

[@fluffysheap]

They are convective, but they certainly aren't naked cores! That sort of describes white dwarfs, but definitely not red dwarfs.

[@petersvancarek]

@@fluffysheap I have written "basically", but of course the fusion is only in center part of star where the temperature and pressure is high enough. Because the red dwarf stars are mostly fully convective means that the material from core mixes freely with material from surface, which doesn't happen with heavier stars which have +-isolated layers. Such star as Sun for example may have great amount of hydrogen left at the end and still be at the end of the life because that hydrogen doesn't reach core where it could fuse and produce energy for billions years longer.

[@doncarlodivargas5497]

While pluto suddenly are not a planet anymore brown dwarfs are still stars!? Isn't that a bit unfair? Or at least inconsistent?

[@frasercain]

They're "brown dwarf stars", not stars. In the same way that Pluto is a "dwarf planet" not a planet. People also called brown dwarfs "failed stars", which is even meaner. :-)

[@doncarlodivargas5497]

​@@frasercain - ah, nice, thanks

[@fluffysheap]

Stars are determined by how they formed. If something formed by the collapse of a nebula, it's a star. The difference between planets and dwarf planets is in how they relate to nearby objects. Pluto makes up only a tiny bit of the mass of the Kuiper Belt. But Earth contains about 99% of the mass of everything at a similar distance from the Sun, and most of the rest is the Moon. There is really no comparison. What's unfair is that the Sun is considered a "dwarf" star, even though it's more massive than about 90% of the stars in the galaxy!

[@420Khatz]

I wonder if a red dwarf would be less volitile w a slow spin?

[@manw3bttcks]

Red dwarfs have all the factors against you. The dimness of the star means the planet has to be super close. So the inverse square effect makes the stellar wind thousands of times what it would be at 1AU. Also the planet being close to the star means very high orbital speed, so if the planet gets hit with a comet it can be much faster. So for planets in the red dwarf habital zone pretty much everything is worse

[@alfonsopayra]

hey, but life has it way of adapting... and if time is what it needs to evolve... well.. time is what there is most! Maybe Superman's story of being stronger here because of the different sun ends up being somehow a true story! and life on those rocky planets is super strong and resilient! we need to think of different ways of fueling life than oxygen and sunlight, I am sure these aliens work differently than us and they fuel with different mechanisms and raw materials. 1 of 10k microorganisms from our sun, dies in a red dwarf star... but maybe 10k organisms from a red dwarf star system survive the same experiment! :) i can't help but be optimistic!

[@AstroTommy66]

Why do red dwarf stars flare with so much energy if they are smaller in mass compared with other stars and therefore, I assume, have less pressure at their center? Where does the energy come from to power their enormously energetic flares or coronal mass ejections? I’ve always wondered that.

[@frasercain]

They're fully convective, so their cores directly to the convective zone which allows heat to travel up to the surface without being moderated by the radiative zone.

[@davidstevenson7557]

What about if the planet is quite massive (super-Earth size, with deep oceans) and has a lot of volatile material to begin with. Stripping these down might allow the planet to have a more Earth-like environment after a few hundred million or a few billion years.

[@ashleyobrien4937]

4 minutes in, well, that settles it then, and to be honest it's what I advocated all along, and that is, the ONLY stars that are worth a damn small yellow dwarfs G type stars such as the one we are quite familiar with, variants from ours, (G2V I think?) are fine I guess as long as they are at least as stable as our own. Why bother trying to set up shop on a exoplanet that is both dismally dim and drab and probably coldish and has no or next to no atmosphere because it's all been baked off by high energy flare particles over millennia. Nope, we should stick to what we know....I know that red dwarf's stars are like the vast majority of all stars and by far the longest lived, but I'd rather have a medium length happy life than a long drawn out miserable one...

[@douglaswilkinson5700]

I've heard stellar astrophysicists state that F8Vs down to K3Vs would be the best dwarfs for hosting planets for life.

[@marklapierre5629]

I think he's saying, "Space is hard".

[@FrancisFjordCupola]

I wish there was more interest for (while I'm not surprised there isn't) exoplanet atmospherics. Like Bill Clinton didn't say: it's the atmosphere, stupid! What kind of atmosphere would be needed to guard against flares, if possible at all? Besides that, is Dr. Ward Howard any family of Paul Sutter? :P

[@chrisbourne3543]

There are many countries that also astronomers in launching satellites

[@cjgparas3]

The problem is small stars is a closer habitable zone, close enough to tidally lock the planet in it.

[@douglaswilkinson5700]

I understand you mean M-dwarfs. Stars are classifed by spectral type (in this case M) and luminosity class (in this case V which means main sequence also called dwarf.) If you read about stellar classification it will help you understand and enjoy astronomy even more!

[@Violence0vAction]

Nice Talk. So after the morass which was anikens life, at the end he sorts it out & is the chosen one. Maybe red dwarfs are similar in that they come around in the end.(which means hundreds of billion years stability?) Unfortunately from what I’ve heard in ur discussion, disappointed in that it appears most planets exposed to billions years flaring would be well zapped mercury/marsish. Hoping to be wrong. Thx for sharing.

[@peterd9698]

Could hydrogen/oxygen continually stripped from gas/ice giants somehow keep replenishing their moons?

[@garyswift9347]

Thanks again, but are red dwarf stars bad in a good way or bad in a bad way? Some people will laugh and some won't get it.

[@danielgaisford2920]

5:45 ..... IF it was pointed at earth.

[@giovdb]

Can life exist around a white dwarf star? If so, how close would the planet have to be?

[@THX..1138]

The proper question is can Abiogenesis happen around Red Dwarf stars.....To that question I'd say no, but not because of flares. There is no reason to think Abiogenesis cannot occur in the oceans of ice worlds that would be fairly unaffected by their star's flare activity....IMO what damns Red Dwarfs is metallicity. Life as we know it requires a rich selection of elements. If you are short just one, like the recently famous Phosphine, life cannot happen. Red Dwarf's and thus the planets that orbit them generally have fairly low metallicity. Also there is the Femi Paradox. In order for the lack of evidence for exolife we've found so far to make sense the path to life has to be adequately narrow. Red Dwarfs make up 75% of stars. If life were possible around Red Dwarfs there should be a lot of life in the Milky Way. Which is not what we are seeing. ...Probably if you are looking for life around stars that don't have a least as rich a metallicity as our Sun you are wasting your time.

[@rJaune]

Do we have any data on whether Red Dwarf Systems go through Late Heavy Bombardments? And for how long?

[@fluffysheap]

We're not sure the late heavy bombardment even happened here!

[@wewillworld522]

Big big Starsss…

[@Discoverer-of-Teleportation]

😮😊

[@Reyajh]

Whenever you talk about the complexity of life, in particular kickstarting it, there are always more and more goldilocks zones... At some point, one has to begin to wonder, let us tweak this..., "Not too hot, not too cold.., j-u-u-s-t right!"

[@larryrossi3219]

Good talk but: WHY are Red Dwarfs so active?

[@zephyramethyst9455]

23:18

[@larryrossi3219]

Thanks!@@zephyramethyst9455

[@Sora._Cloud]

Any planet can survive once the magnetosphere is power enough to

[@JohnMuz1]

May the wonky picture be with you.

[@zebonautsmith1541]

And of course life could never exist on that "dangerous" planet Earth; with all it's dangerous deep freezes; tornadoes; earthquakes; baking deserts; and seasonal instability. How would any creatures cope with that strange condition called "night" which happens once every rotation? Life on Earth? Impossible.

[@ShakilAhmed-fy8mg]

Dwarfstartwinklestar

[@anonymous-zg7wh]

I love eating hydrogen

[@longcastle4863]

Wouldn’t life forms in that environment evolve to tolerate or at least survive such energy bursts? Like biological or cultural circuit breakers, perhaps…

[@fratercontenduntocculta8161]

Second! lol

[@ShakilAhmed-fy8mg]

Safetheworld

[@ShakilAhmed-fy8mg]

Starareautomaticvanish

[@terminusest5902]

How did the Big Bang overcome gravity. Why did it not become in insensibly, ultra big, massive and huge Black Hole. A normal Black Hole only contains a tiny part of the universes mass. When did gravity begin.?

[@prawnmikus]

I've wondered that too. It could be that gravity was in a losing battle due to the rate of expansion (many many times light speed) early on.

[@fluffysheap]

It never really needed to overcome gravity. The expansion of the universe is not objects moving away from each other through space, it is space itself expanding. Gravity just doesn't apply. You're right that in the very early universe, any given of space would have contained enough mass to form a black hole. That would have happened except that a black hole works by comparison to the space outside it. Inside is very dense, and outside is not so dense. Since the early universe was of roughly uniform density, there was no place with more mass than any other place. Therefore there was no way to define the "inside" and "outside" and therefore no black hole. At least no universe-sized black hole. Maybe some black holes formed, called primordial black holes, and maybe those helped form early galaxies and maybe they are part of dark matter. It's not certain.

[@Discoverer-of-Teleportation]

answer hidden in teleportation, the only way to traverse universe, after instantly reaching every corner of universe

[@JungleJargon]

Life can’t exist without the complex relationships between specifically ordered and concatenated highly responsive programming. To suggest that it all happened by natural means is to suggest that there is magical matter making and directing itself.

[@belstar1128]

How was the thing (god i guess) that did the "ordered and concatenated highly responsive programming" created then ?

[@JungleJargon]

@@belstar1128 The Creator of the physical universe can’t be a created thing Himself. He has to be all knowing all powerful and not limited by His fabrication of time and distance. (He has to be eternal.)

[@prawnmikus]

If lack of understanding then magic is not how we learn. It might be comforting to think that way though.

[@JungleJargon]

@@prawnmikus Naturalism is a belief in magic and its idolatry making nature into a god.

[@DanielVerberne]

Dr Howard looks too young to be bald.

[@JungleJargon]

People are desperate trying to prove a natural cause for the creation of nature.

[@prawnmikus]

Doesn't nature imply natural to begin with? 'A ghost did it' is not a good explanation.

[@JungleJargon]

@@prawnmikus Matter and energy cannot make or direct themselves. The cause has to be supernatural by definition of not being able to be a natural cause for natural things.

[@justanangrygamer2972]

Wouldn't mind listening to this except the dude has such an annoying lisp...

[@infocloudonline3720]

Someone has a phobia

[@fluffysheap]

It's not a lisp, it's a problem with his microphone