Related papers: Constraints in the coupling Star-Life
Planetary rotation rate is a key parameter in determining atmospheric circulation and hence the spatial pattern of clouds. Since clouds can exert a dominant control on planetary radiation balance, rotation rate could be critical for…
Stars play a key role in the evolution of the Universe, as sources of radiation, as dynamical engines, and as chemical factories. Outputs of stellar models are then central to various studies in astrophysics. Stellar physics links…
Energetic particles, such as stellar cosmic rays, produced at a heightened rate by active stars (like the young Sun) may have been important for the origin of life on Earth and other exoplanets. Here we compare, as a function of stellar…
Cosmic rays can penetrate planetary atmospheres driving the formation of prebiotic molecules, which are important for the origin of life. We calculate the Galactic cosmic ray fluxes in the habitable zone of five nearby, well-studied…
Yes, the photon. While a nonzero photon mass has been under experimental and theoretical study for years, the possible implication of a finite photon lifetime lacks discussion. The tight experimental upper bound of the photon mass restricts…
Physical properties of stars such as luminosity, surface temperature, distance, or mass are measured from observations. These physical properties are of paramount importance to understand how stars are born, live, and die in the universe…
We consider the habitability of Earth-analogs around stars of different masses, which is regulated by the stellar lifetime, stellar wind-induced atmospheric erosion, and biologically active ultraviolet (UV) irradiance. By estimating the…
The concept of a system-wide measure of the sustainment of life (habitability) for space-faring interplanetary species is introduced and explored. Although largely agnostic to the details of how interplanetary life might operate (e.g., via…
Stars and planets are the fundamental objects of the Universe. Their formation processes, though related, may differ in important ways. Stars almost certainly form from gravitational collapse and probably have formed this way since the…
The evolution of star clusters is determined by several internal and external processes. Here we focus on two dominant internal effects, namely energy exchange between stars through close encounters (two-body relaxation) and mass-loss of…
Some properties of the world are fixed by physics derived from mathematical symmetries, while others are selected from an ensemble of possibilities. Several successes and failures of ``anthropic'' reasoning in this context are reviewed in…
Synchronously orbiting, tidally-locked exoplanets with a dayside facing their star and a permanently dark nightside orbiting dim stars are prime candidates for habitability. Simulations of these planets often show the potential to maintain…
The process of evolution by natural selection leads to phenotypes of increasing fitness. For cellular chemical reaction networks, this means optimising a variety of fitness functions such as robustness, precision, or sensitivity to external…
Nature's many complex systems--physical, biological, and cultural--are islands of low-entropy order within increasingly disordered seas of surrounding, high-entropy chaos. Energy is a principal facilitator of the rising complexity of all…
Stars and their exoplanets evolve together. Depending on the physical characteristics of these systems, such as age, orbital distance and activity of the host stars, certain types of star-exoplanet interactions can dominate during given…
Stellar activity and planetary atmospheric properties have the potential to strongly influence habitability. To date, neither have been adequately studied in the multiverse context, so there has been no assessment of how these effects…
Stars, and collections of stars, encode rich signatures of stellar physics and galaxy evolution. With properties influenced by both their environment and intrinsic nature, stars retain information about astrophysical phenomena that are not…
Many mechanisms, functions and structures of life have been unraveled. However, the fundamental driving force that propelled chemical evolution and led to life has remained obscure. The 2nd law of thermodynamics, written as an equation of…
Star clusters with a high central density contain an ecological network of evolving binaries, affected by interactions with passing stars, while in turn affecting the energy budget of the cluster as a whole by giving off binding energy.…
Motivated by the possible existence of other universes, with possible variations in the laws of physics, this paper explores the parameter space of fundamental constants that allows for the existence of stars. To make this problem…