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Matteo Cantiello edited But_let_s_forget_intelligence__.tex
almost 8 years ago
Commit id: 4b593d1dc414fb06f10f6297d795cadd376bd5e5
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Now, it turns out that the most common type of star in the Universe is not a star like the Sun, but one about 1/10th its mass. The particularity of these very-low mass stars is that they are much dimmer: They burn their candle very slowly and live about 1000 times longer than a star like our Sun. Thermonuclear reactions allow the Sun to shine for about 10 billion years. A star 0.1 times the mass of the Sun on the other hand lives for 10 trillion years. This offers plenty of opportunity for life to emerge in the future around stars smaller than the Sun. These stars will still be shining when no more star formation is ongoing in the Universe.
It then seems obvious that, assuming these low-mass stars provide
similar a not too dissimilar environment for
life as Life compared to our Sun, the relative probability of life-emergence has to peak in the
very far future. This is the main result of Loeb and collaborators.
The results is particularly nice since it Note that their statement is relative:
It doesn't state They do not tell how many planets hosting life are present at a certain time.
It They just calculates the relative probability as function of time.
As the authors point out, ``The question is then, why do we find ourselves orbiting a star like the Sun now rather than a lower mass star in the future?''