Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science

Double Sunsets Common

Latest data indicates that debris & dust disks are common around multiple stars. Previously there was concern that additional stars would clear out such disks but this observational data plus the previous detection of planets around multiple stars lay that concern to rest.

On the bummer side, recent thinking says that <a href=http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1136">; planets around the very common red dwarfs would NOT have water or volitiles.

under nominal circumstances, planets in main sequence habitable zones around M stars are likely to be fully formed and in their final orbits by the time the gaseous circumstellar disk has dissipated or several million years after planetesimal formation, whichever is later. If growth is in situ, dynamical and thermal factors imply that the planets are unlikely to have large volatile inventories, and planetary masses are likely to be small. The large collision speeds of impacting comets, as well as the high activity and luminosities of young M stars, may lead to substantial mass loss from planetary atmospheres, depleting any reservoirs of volatiles that planets within the HZs are able to accrete.

It could well be that more "Earthlike" planets are found around the far less common G type stars. Earthlike in this sense being defines as a planet with land masses and liquid water lakes or oceans.

As an aside I speculate that F stars with their far larger habitable zones could support 2-4 Earths. Problem being that after a few billion years they leave the main sequence and fry their planets way, way before life has the time to evolve multicellular complexity. Were we to ever be able to cruise the galaxy, there would be large #s of ocanic planets around late A and F stars ripe for the addition of complex life forms. These environments would be good for hundreds of millions of years.

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