Red dwarf stars (actual ones, not the hilarious British space comedy series)

Everything else
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I don’t think I ever actually knew much about red dwarfs but according to Wikipedia they constitute most of the stars in the galaxy.

Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf and apparently there’s a planet around it in what may be a goldilocks zone:

What’s more, it seems that red dwarfs could have lifespans much, much longer than the sun, depending on their mass relative to Sol:

image

So are Red dwarfs where it’s probably at as far as life in the galaxy? Is it possible that (if there is abundant life in the galaxy, stipulated that’s a big if) living under a (relatively) hot yellow star as we do is the exception, and it would be more common to have Earthlike worlds spinning around red stars with really short years?

Curious for the more astronomically inclined forumers to weigh in.

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I remember looking this stuff up for some reason months ago!

Red Dwarfs reflect a strange inverse relationship between mass and lifespan in stellar astronomy. However it’s worth pointing out that the light output of Red Dwarfs is considerably less, to the point where some astronomers question if they can support life (this light is much lower energy as well). The “Goldilocks” zone is much closer to the star and may have problems with being tidally locked. Something like <1% of Sol, off the top of my head. They’re probably good places for end-of-universe species to hang out around for as long as possible.

It’s widely thought there have been two or three generations of stars since the big bang. The first super-massive stars all went nova billions of years ago and seeded the primordial “metals”; ie in astrophysics terms everything not hydrogen or helium. The amount of “metals” in the spectra of a stars light shows its generation, and there have been no 0-metal stars ever discovered, so it’s though they also seeded the primordial massive (not supermassive) black holes. Supermassive black holes being thousands or millions of times more massive than the sun.

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FB3C8CE5-129D-40A9-B04F-FEEA63B889A6

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I was afraid of something like that.

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Fixed that for you. No no, no thanks necessary, old pal.

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That’s what I thought the topic was about when I saw the title.

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That’s why it’s not in Books, Music, and TV, people!

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I suppose you can move the thread there. It would make more sense I suppose.
Note: At the time of this post, the title was simply Red Dwarf Stars

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It would make much less sense to move the thread there, since this thread is about actual astronomy!

And yes, I just edited the thread title.

Sci fi geeks, sigh…

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Well hot diggity they finally found a planet around our nearest interstellar neighbor. Now we just need to confirm if it can support life. If it’s habitable, I suggest bee lining for crawlers and the Cloudbase Academy for uncontested epeen superiority over our rivals.