Want to Find Alien Life? Dying Stars May Be the Place to Look
A recent paper published in Astrophysical Journal by Kaltenegger, Director of Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University, and her colleagues Ramses Ramirez created a simulator where life is possible to exist near stars that are almost dying and are much older than our sun.
"We can find all these new places that may become habitable worlds," Kaltenegger said, in the dim, red glow of a slow-burning dwarf star, or on once-frozen planets thawed by a rapidly expanding red giant."
There are as many two dozen suns that are capable of sustaining life forms, revealed Ramirez and Kaltenegger. Now they want the scientists to consider these suns and look at them closely.
For now, Earth is the only planet that is close enough to give life-supporting warmth but not too close so as to burn. However, as the stars mature, they grow in size. But in four billion years, sun will consume most of its hydrogen and expand 200 times its size. As a result, it will end up touching the frozen outer-edges of the solar system, making the planet completely inhabitable. In that future, the most habitable planets will be Pluto and its moon, Charon, as well as Neptune with its moon, Triton.
"We won't be around to see if that happens - Earth will be a hot, sizzling wasteland, at that point," Kaltenegger said, "if it doesn't get engulfed entirely by the expanding sun. Best case scenario, humans will already be far off in space searching for somewhere else to call home. Worst case, civilization burns to a crisp."
