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Old 03-12-2010, 01:47 PM
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ngcles
The Observologist

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Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Billimari, NSW Central West
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Hi Bartman & All,

Quote:
Originally Posted by bartman View Post
Apart from the other interesting stuff in that article, I would like to ask.... If our sun is about 4.5 b years old and the stars they are talking about are about twice the age of our star, and 'complex life' has evolved over an extra ~5 b years, then surely we would have heard from them by now?

Wouldn't 5b years be enough time to figure out inter galactic travel? ( through what ever means....)
Sure, there are billions of galaxies and trillions upon trillions of stars out there, but if they have that 5b years on us they would have invented some sort of 'earth like- supporting life- planet radar'?
We are finding hundreds of exoplanets at the moment, and we are just a speck compared to the research "they" have been doing.....for five billion years.....


.....just wondering.....

Bartman

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11888362
This is a very interesting finding but as has already been pointed out, it has only a small impact on calculating in what form the "missing matter/energy" is because so little matter appears to be actually locked-up in stars in our Universe.

But to provide an answer (there could be other answers for much relies on speculation and best-guesses) to your question, it is manifestly improbable that any of these newly discovered stars play host to advanced/intelligent/space-faring races. They are in elliptical galaxies for a start which are extremely harsh environments for advanced life (or indeed any life).

The stars they mention are "old" red-dwarfs. Old stars obviously formed a very long time before the Sun and it is manifestly improbable that there would have been enough metals in the gas from which these stars formed (so early in the history of the Universe) (a) to make any terrestrial-type planets and (b) have the right elements in the right abundances to produce the chemistry essential to life -- let alone advanced life or intelligent life.

Third, Red-dwarf stars are low mass, low luminosity stars with very narrow habitable zones so close to the host star that tidal locking of any terrestrial planet is a virtual certainty. Red dwarf stars are very often flare stars, a type of star that has high magnetic activity unleasing powerful x-ray bursts from sumo-sized solar flares that continue for very long time-scales. These factors (coupled with the others) further reduce the chances to what I'd suggest is a figure so low, that for all intents and purposes, is zero.

We have added a very large number of stars to the inventory, but none of them appear to be sites where advanced life would stand a whelk's chance in a supernova (apologies to Douglas Adams).


Best,

Les D
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