is it possible for red dwarfs to support life on other planets since theyre so common, and how many yellow dwarfs are their in the milky way ? thanks

a. An old saying: "Google is your friend".

b. "is it possible for red dwarfs to support life on other planets since theyre so common"
Common never meant possible or/and probable. Personally, i will always look for the type
of stars with planet systems which are are capable to sustain life.

Red Dwarfs don't make enought light to produce life.

Some red dwarfs do have planetary systems...It depends on the planets.

I don't know all the answers, but would add a few general remarks.

The Universe has a lot of interesting chemistry, obviously more than "a lot". But, the requirements for rudimentary life, up and running so to speak, are location, size, contents, temperature, and insularity.

Location and size in the RD case might begin with a smaller protostellar nebula. Any planets may be what we would call "moon size"---maybe like Mercury. They would need to be close to the RD, and thus possibly locked into a gravitational ambiguity...no spinning upon the planetary axis. One side would be warmer, and bathed in whatever radiance. The other side of such a planet would be far colder.

Except if there were moisture, gravitationally bound in an atmosphere. It would rise and fall in currents near the "terminator" shadow line, and thus perhaps offer some relief to parts of the cold side of the planet. Maybe there could be something like "life"???


Another factor is contents. In this case, a "Goldilocks" planet with moisture, or suitable condensed gasses for some form of respiration. However, I have read about strange bacteria retrieved from 2000 feet drilling cores, in the Earth- so who knows?

Temperature, I already mentioned.

Insularity means having some degree of an magma-state iron core to add a planetary magnetosphere for trapping and deflecting of harmful solar particles and cosmic rays.
Here is the hitch, though. A star like a RD may not generate enough solar wind to produce an astrosphere to protect the solar system from deadly interstellar cosmic rays- which refer to particles like hydrogen, helium, and iron spun off from supernovae.

A solar system with life support has layers of protection, if it is like our own in some fashion. But even that is moot, if your part of the galaxy is a like demolition derby for interstellar particles.

Bottom line, I don't know, but would say that a hotel on such a planet would be be a termite mound, rather than a place on a tourist map.

You guys should check out pics from the Hubble Satellite. They have some amazing images. I think I posted a few before in Aerial Phenomina's.

New stars are being born as we talk..?

on average about one new star per year, and one star dying each year as a planetary nebula in the Milky Way. These rates are different in different types of galaxies, but you can say that this is roughly the average over all galaxies in the Universe. We estimate at about 100 billion the number of galaxies in the observable Universe, therefore there are about 100 billion stars being born and dying each year, which corresponds to about 275 million per day, in the whole observable Universe.

LINK-> How many stars are born and die each day?

Am I the only one here that doesn't know what red/yellow dwarves are?

This thread has out-lived its usefulness...The question was answered

As for yellow, no, I'm cluless to. Red dwafs are stars that almost had enough energy to become a sun-like star, but didnt, and colapsed into a small cool star. Most stars are Red dwafs.

This is easily solved..The red ones were in the wizzard of oz and the yellow ones were in Willy Wonkers Chocolate Factory..!!! hee hee hee

Stars come in all sorts of sizes and colours. A dwarf star is simply a small star, as opposed to the large stars which are called giants or, in extreme cases, super giants.

Stars also vary in colour. The colour of a star depends on it's surface temperature. A blue star is very hot, a red star is relatively cool. Hence a red dwarf is a small cool star. A yellow dwarf is a small star with a higher surface temperature than a red dwarf. (A Waspie_Dwarf is a small, round, bearded person).

The sun is a yellow dwarf.

This is a very simplified explanation but I hope it has been of help.

Yellow dwarfs are fairly uncommon, at least in the scheme of things compared to Red dwarf starts. That doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of them (there are), but there are hundreds of thousands of red dwarfs for every yellow dwarf.

A red dwarf star certainly does have enough light to support life on an orbitting planet. That's not the problem, though. The problem is that on the lower end Red dwarfs, in order for a planet to be close enough to get enough useful sunlight, it would end up being one of two things:

1)Tidally locked, from being so close to the sun;
2)Inside the Roche limit, meaning that tidal forces would tear the planet apart.

This is only in the case of the lower end red dwarfs. From what I remember, the higher class Red dwarves could have life-supporting planets without those planets being tidally locked, although the planets would be extremely close to their sun in comparison to Earth's orbit - we're talking an orbit equal or shorter than Mercury's, in comparison.

I think some of you are thinking of Brown Dwarfs, which are too small to ignite and shed visible light. Some do put out infrared light however, I think.

There can be life deep underground, so a magnetosphere is not necessary. There only needs to be an energy source and resources for complex chemicals. Like someone said, there has been microbes found deep in the Earths crust, under miles of Antartic ice and at the lowest reaches of the oceans. Life is a lot tougher then was thought perhaps twenty years ago.

I think life could easily exist around red dwarfs and even white dwarfs, that are burnt out giants.