5 ms·

Would it remain in a habitable state longer than Earth?

• throwaway_yy2Di 10y ago
  Yes, because the lifespan of low-powered red dwarfs is vastly longer than the sun's. The wiki page cites a figure of 4 trillion years (!) for Proxima: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri
• flashman 10y ago
  As with everything in astronomy: it depends. Just because the star is longer-lived than the Sun doesn't mean its planets will remain habitable as long. Small stars have planets that orbit close and become tidally locked, possibly losing their water and atmosphere in tens or hundreds of millions of years. It will be a long, long time until Proxima Centauri dies – four trillion years by one estimate[1] – but its planet may be dead already. Cheerfully, multicellular life on Earth only has somewhere between 600 and 800 million years left before the Sun gets too hot and all the carbon dioxide disappears from the atmosphere. But single-celled organisms will persist nearly another 3 billion years.[2] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future#Future_of_the_Earth.2C_the_Solar_System_and_the_Universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future#Fut...
  • throwaway_yy2Di 10y ago
    ...tidally locked, possibly losing their water and atmosphere in tens or hundreds of millions of years. How would this happen?