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> Near the center of a galaxy, where stars are so closely packed together that the night sky is filled with bright lights, perhaps illuminating their world to w
by joshuahedlund 4y ago
> Near the center of a galaxy, where stars are so closely packed together that the night sky is filled with bright lights, perhaps illuminating their world to what we experience around twilight, or even brighter.
My understanding is this is unfavorable for life due to any planets being constantly sanitized by too many nearby stars going supernova
> Far removed from the center of a galaxy, or even on a rogue star that has escaped its galaxy early on. Very few stars visible in the sky.
My understanding is this is also unlikely since a total lack of nearby stars would deprive a star system of the heavier elements needed to make molecules out of anything more interesting than helium and hydrogen.
It’s possible that a happy medium between too many or few is needed for life (or at least highly favored along a bell curve along which our conditions are more likely to be near the top)
- pavel_lishin 4y agoIn a big-enough universe, all sorts of unlikely things end up happening.
- smcnally 4y ago“Even when you’re one in a million, there are 6,000 others just like you” at cosmic scale.
- causi 4y agoAccording to a 2022 study, there are up to ten rogue planets for every one orbiting a star.
- kulahan 4y agoA rogue planet has pretty much zero chance of harboring life. It needs a sun.
- vikramkr 4y agoThere's plenty of chemosynthetic life on earth that doesn't need a sun - even if earth style life needed the sun to evolve, if the earth became a rogue planet those organisms might be fine. And life might not have needed the sun to evolve.
- kulahan 4y agoYeah, that doesn't work when you're not receiving any heat whatsoever. There needs to be an energy input. For Earth, that's the sun. Where is the energy coming from otherwise?