Avi Loeb

10 trillion years, a thousand times longer than the current age of the universe.

I didn't know they can live that long.

Yeah, so one very fundamental question that I wrote a paper about a decade ago, I said, well, these stars that are most common, a tenth of the mass of the sun, they live a thousand times longer

And they're very common.

So why don't we live next to a low mass star like that, a dwarf star, in the future?

There is much more opportunity, right?

In the future around such stars, in the habitable zone around them, we do see planets.

In fact, the nearest star to us is Proxima Centauri.

Its habitable zone is 20 times closer to the star because it's a faint star.

And there is a planet there, Proxima b.

so why aren't we on a planet like that in the future because that's the most typical thing you would find um the answer is probably these dwarf stars you know because they're fainter and they live longer you have to get close to the furnace when the furnace is very dim okay so the habitable zone is close in

And then you are vulnerable to the wind coming from the star or to any flares on the surface of the star.

And that could rip apart, dislodge the atmosphere of the planet.

So you won't have life as we know it on a planet in the habitable zone around the most common dwarf star.

That explains why we live next to a star like the sun, where we can be comfortably far away from it so that it doesn't damage the prospects of...

Earth retaining its atmosphere.

I mean, Mars lost its atmosphere.

We have a reminder next to us that it can happen.

You can lose the atmosphere.

We don't understand exactly why Mars lost its atmosphere.