Could Nibiru be the real reason for climate change

[Edgar]

#7016

Is our climate changing because of the presence of Nibiru in our solar system? If you read our entire site, you should know by now that Planet X / aka Nibiru is a Brown Dwarf. Remember, you cannot see brown dwarfs with the naked eye.

Earth’s oceans are warming up, thus a rise in sea level as the warm water expands.  In March 2002 scientific studies confirmed that polar ice was melting from the bottom up. By 2004, however, the air temperature was actually cooling. In 2007, French and Dutch scientists were challenging the concept of global warming because computer models did not hold true and other planets in the solar system were also experiencing warming.

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In geophysics, the dynamo theory proposes a mechanism by which a celestial body such as Earth or a star generates a magnetic field. The dynamo theory describes the process through which a rotating, convecting, and electrically conducting fluid can maintain a magnetic field over astronomical time scales. A dynamo is thought to be the source of the Earth’s magnetic field, as well as the magnetic fields of other planets.

Tidal heating supporting a dynamo

Tidal forces between celestial orbiting bodies causes friction that heats up the interiors of these orbiting bodies.This is known as tidal heating, and it helps create the liquid interior criteria, providing that this interior is conductive, that is required to produce a dynamo. For example, Saturn’s Enceladus and Jupiter’s Io have enough tidal heating to liquify its inner core, even if a moon is not conductive to support a dynamo. [10] [11] Mercury, despite its small size, has a magnetic field, because it has a conductive liquid core created by its iron composition and friction resulting from its highly elliptical orbit.[12] It is theorized that the Moon once had a magnetic field, based on evidence from magnetized lunar rocks, due to its short-lived closer distance to Earth creating tidal heating. [13] An orbit and rotation of a planet helps provide a liquid core, and supplements kinetic energy that supports a dynamo action. Source

Tidal effects (Habitability of red dwarf systems)

At the close distances that red dwarf planets would have to maintain to their stars in order to maintain liquid water at their surfaces, tidal locking to the host star is likely, causing the planet to rotate around its axis once for every revolution around the star; as a result, one side of the planet would eternally face the star and another side would perpetually face away, creating great extremes of temperature. For many years, it was believed that life on such planets would be limited to a ring-like region known as the terminator, where the star would always appear on the horizon.

In the past, it was believed that efficient heat transfer between the sides of the planet necessitate an atmosphere so thick as to disallow photosynthesis. Due to differential heating, it was argued, a tidally locked planet would experience fierce winds blowing continually towards the night side[citation needed] with permanent torrential rain at the point directly facing the local star,[20] the subsolar point. In the opinion of one author this makes complex life improbable.[21] Plant life would have to adapt to the constant gale, for example by anchoring securely into the soil and sprouting long flexible leaves that do not snap. Animals would rely on infrared vision, as signaling by calls or scents would be difficult over the din of the planet-wide gale. Underwater life would, however, be protected from fierce winds and flares, and vast blooms of black photosynthetic plankton and algae could support the sea life.[22]

In contrast to the previously bleak picture for life, 1997 studies by Robert Haberle and Manoj Joshi of NASA’s Ames Research Center in California have shown that a planet’s atmosphere (assuming it included greenhouse gases CO2 and H2O) need only be 100 millibar, or 10% of Earth’s atmosphere, for the star’s heat to be effectively carried to the night side, a figure well within the bounds of photosynthesis.[23] Research two years later by Martin Heath of Greenwich Community College has shown that seawater, too, could effectively circulate without freezing solid if the ocean basins were deep enough to allow free flow beneath the night side’s ice cap. Additionally, a 2010 study concluded that Earth-like water worlds tidally locked to their stars would still have temperatures above 240 K (−33 °C) on the night side.[24] Climate models constructed in 2013 indicate that cloud formation on tidally locked planets would minimize the temperature difference between the day and the night side, greatly improving habitability prospects for red dwarf planets.[4] Further research, including a consideration of the amount of photosynthetically active radiation, has suggested that tidally locked planets in red dwarf systems might at least be habitable for higher plants.[25]

The existence of a permanent day side and night side is not the only potential setback for life around red dwarfs. Tidal heating experienced by planets in the habitable zone of red dwarfs less than 30% of the mass of the Sun may cause them to be “baked out” and become “tidal Venuses.” [1] Combined with the other impediments to red dwarf habitability,[3] this may make the probability of many red dwarfs hosting life as we know it very low compared to other star types.[2] There may not even be enough water for habitable planets around many red dwarfs;[26] what little water found on these planets, in particular Earth-sized ones, may be located on the cold night side of the planet. In contrast to the predictions of earlier studies on tidal Venuses, though, this “trapped water” may help to stave off runaway greenhouse effects and improve the habitability of red dwarf systems.[27] Source

 

Wikipedia links:

Dynamo theory
Tidal heating supporting a dynamo
Habitability of red dwarf systems

 

We pasted wikipedia content below, just in case someone wanted to delete wiki posts:)

 

Dynamo Theory
In geophysics, the dynamo theory proposes a mechanism by which a celestial body such as Earth or a star generates a magnetic field. The dynamo theory describes the process through which a rotating, convecting, and electrically conducting fluid can maintain a magnetic field over astronomical time scales. A dynamo is thought to be the source of the Earth’s magnetic field, as well as the magnetic fields of other planets.

Contents [hide]
1 History of theory
2 Formal definition
2.1 Tidal heating supporting a dynamo
3 Kinematic dynamo theory
4 Nonlinear dynamo theory
5 Numerical models
6 See also
7 References
History of theory[edit]
When William Gilbert published de Magnete in 1600, he concluded that the Earth is magnetic and proposed the first hypothesis for the origin of this magnetism: permanent magnetism such as that found in lodestone. In 1919, Joseph Larmor proposed that a dynamo might be generating the field.[2][3] However, even after he advanced his hypothesis, some prominent scientists advanced alternate explanations. Einstein believed that there might be an asymmetry between the charges of the electron and proton so that the Earth’s magnetic field would be produced by the entire Earth. The Nobel Prize winner Patrick Blackett did a series of experiments looking for a fundamental relation between angular momentum and magnetic moment, but found none.[4][5]

Walter M. Elsasser, considered a “father” of the presently accepted dynamo theory as an explanation of the Earth’s magnetism, proposed that this magnetic field resulted from electric currents induced in the fluid outer core of the Earth. He revealed the history of the Earth’s magnetic field through pioneering the study of the magnetic orientation of minerals in rocks.

In order to maintain the magnetic field against ohmic decay (which would occur for the dipole field in 20,000 years), the outer core must be convecting. The convection is likely some combination of thermal and compositional convection. The mantle controls the rate at which heat is extracted from the core. Heat sources include gravitational energy released by the compression of the core, gravitational energy released by the rejection of light elements (probably sulfur, oxygen, or silicon) at the inner core boundary as it grows, latent heat of crystallization at the inner core boundary, and radioactivity of potassium, uranium and thorium.[6]

At the dawn of the 21st century, numerical modeling of the Earth’s magnetic field has not been successfully demonstrated, but appears to be in reach. Initial models are focused on field generation by convection in the planet’s fluid outer core. It was possible to show the generation of a strong, Earth-like field when the model assumed a uniform core-surface temperature and exceptionally high viscosities for the core fluid. Computations which incorporated more realistic parameter values yielded magnetic fields that were less Earth-like, but also point the way to model refinements which may ultimately lead to an accurate analytic model. Slight variations in the core-surface temperature, in the range of a few millikelvins, result in significant increases in convective flow and produce more realistic magnetic fields.[7][8]

Formal definition[edit]
Dynamo theory describes the process through which a rotating, convecting, and electrically conducting fluid acts to maintain a magnetic field. This theory is used to explain the presence of anomalously long-lived magnetic fields in astrophysical bodies. The conductive fluid in the geodynamo is liquid iron in the outer core, and in the solar dynamo is ionized gas at the tachocline. Dynamo theory of astrophysical bodies uses magnetohydrodynamic equations to investigate how the fluid can continuously regenerate the magnetic field.

It was once believed that the dipole, which comprises much of the Earth’s magnetic field and is misaligned along the rotation axis by 11.3 degrees, was caused by permanent magnetization of the materials in the earth. This means that dynamo theory was originally used to explain the Sun’s magnetic field in its relationship with that of the Earth. However, this hypothesis, which was initially proposed by Joseph Larmor in 1919, has been modified due to extensive studies of magnetic secular variation, paleomagnetism (including polarity reversals), seismology, and the solar system’s abundance of elements. Also, the application of the theories of Carl Friedrich Gauss to magnetic observations showed that Earth’s magnetic field had an internal, rather than external, origin.

There are three requisites for a dynamo to operate:

An electrically conductive fluid medium
Kinetic energy provided by planetary rotation
An internal energy source to drive convective motions within the fluid.[9]
In the case of the Earth, the magnetic field is induced and constantly maintained by the convection of liquid iron in the outer core. A requirement for the induction of field is a rotating fluid. Rotation in the outer core is supplied by the Coriolis effect caused by the rotation of the Earth. The Coriolis force tends to organize fluid motions and electric currents into columns (also see Taylor columns) aligned with the rotation axis. Induction or creation of magnetic field is described by the induction equation:

\frac{\partial \mathbf{B}}{\partial t} = \eta \nabla^2 \mathbf{B} + \nabla \times (\mathbf{u} \times \mathbf{B})
where u is velocity, B is magnetic field, t is time, and \eta=1/\sigma\mu is the magnetic diffusivity with \sigma electrical conductivity and \mu permeability. The ratio of the second term on the right hand side to the first term gives the Magnetic Reynolds number, a dimensionless ratio of advection of magnetic field to diffusion.

Tidal heating supporting a dynamo[edit]
Tidal forces between celestial orbiting bodies causes friction that heats up the interiors of these orbiting bodies. This is known as tidal heating, and it helps create the liquid interior criteria, providing that this interior is conductive, that is required to produce a dynamo. For example, Saturn’s Enceladus and Jupiter’s Io have enough tidal heating to liquify its inner core, even if a moon is not conductive to support a dynamo. [10] [11] Mercury, despite its small size, has a magnetic field, because it has a conductive liquid core created by its iron composition and friction resulting from its highly elliptical orbit.[12] It is theorized that the Moon once had a magnetic field, based on evidence from magnetized lunar rocks, due to its short-lived closer distance to Earth creating tidal heating. [13] An orbit and rotation of a planet helps provide a liquid core, and supplements kinetic energy that supports a dynamo action.

Kinematic dynamo theory[edit]
In kinematic dynamo theory the velocity field is prescribed, instead of being a dynamic variable. This method cannot provide the time variable behavior of a fully nonlinear chaotic dynamo but is useful in studying how magnetic field strength varies with the flow structure and speed.

Using Maxwell’s equations simultaneously with the curl of Ohm’s Law, one can derive what is basically the linear eigenvalue equation for magnetic fields (B) which can be done when assuming that the magnetic field is independent from the velocity field. One arrives at a critical magnetic Reynolds number above which the flow strength is sufficient to amplify the imposed magnetic field, and below which it decays.

The most functional feature of kinematic dynamo theory is that it can be used to test whether a velocity field is or is not capable of dynamo action. By applying a certain velocity field to a small magnetic field, it can be determined through observation whether the magnetic field tends to grow or not in reaction to the applied flow. If the magnetic field does grow, then the system is either capable of dynamo action or is a dynamo, but if the magnetic field does not grow, then it is simply referred to as non-dynamo.

The membrane paradigm is a way of looking at black holes that allows for the material near their surfaces to be expressed in the language of dynamo theory.

Nonlinear dynamo theory[edit]
The kinematic approximation becomes invalid when the magnetic field becomes strong enough to affect the fluid motions. In that case the velocity field becomes affected by the Lorentz force, and so the induction equation is no longer linear in the magnetic field. In most cases this leads to a quenching of the amplitude of the dynamo. Such dynamos are sometimes also referred to as hydromagnetic dynamos. Virtually all dynamos in astrophysics and geophysics are hydromagnetic dynamos.

Numerical models are used to simulate fully nonlinear dynamos. A minimum of 5 equations are needed. They are as follows. The induction equation, see above. Maxwell’s equation:

\nabla \cdot \mathbf{B}=0
The (sometimes) Boussinesq[disambiguation needed] conservation of mass:

\nabla \cdot \mathbf{u} = 0
The (sometimes) Boussinesq conservation of momentum, also known as the Navier-Stokes equation:

\frac{D\mathbf{u}}{Dt} = -\nabla p + \nu \nabla^2 \mathbf{u} + \rho’\mathbf{g} + 2\mathbf{\Omega} \times \mathbf{u} + \mathbf{\Omega} \times \mathbf{\Omega} \times \mathbf{R} + \mathbf{J} \times \mathbf{B}
where \nu is the kinematic viscosity, \rho’ is the density perturbation that provides buoyancy (for thermal convection \rho’=\alpha\Delta T, \Omega is the rotation rate of the Earth, and \mathbf{J} is the electrical current density.

Finally, a transport equation, usually of heat (sometimes of light element concentration):

\frac{\partial T}{\partial t} = \kappa \nabla^2 T +\epsilon
where T is temperature, \kappa=k/\rho c_p is the thermal diffusivity with k thermal conductivity, c_p heat capacity, and \rho density, and \epsilon is an optional heat source. Often the pressure is the dynamic pressure, with the hydrostatic pressure and centripetal potential removed. These equations are then non-dimensionalized, introducing the non-dimensional parameters,

Ra=\frac{g\alpha T D^3}{\nu \kappa} , E=\frac{\nu}{\Omega D^2} , Pr=\frac{\nu}{\kappa} , Pm=\frac{\nu}{\eta}
where Ra is the Rayleigh number, E the Ekman number, Pr and Pm the Prandtl and magnetic Prandtl number. Magnetic field scaling is often in Elsasser number units B=(\rho \Omega/\sigma)^{1/2}.

Numerical models[edit]
The equations for the geodynamo are enormously difficult to solve, and the realism of the solutions is limited mainly by computer power. For decades, theorists were confined to kinematic dynamo models described above, in which the fluid motion is chosen in advance and the effect on the magnetic field calculated. Kinematic dynamo theory was mainly a matter of trying different flow geometries and seeing whether they could sustain a dynamo.[14]

The first self-consistent dynamo models, ones that determine both the fluid motions and the magnetic field, were developed by two groups in 1995, one in Japan[15] and one in the United States.[16][17] The latter received significant attention because it successfully reproduced some of the characteristics of the Earth’s field, including geomagnetic reversals.[14]

 

Habitability of red dwarf systems
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An artist’s impression of a planet in orbit around a red dwarf.

This artist’s concept illustrates a young red dwarf surrounded by three planets.
The habitability of red dwarf systems is determined by a large number of factors from a variety of sources. Although the low stellar flux, high probability of tidal locking, small circumstellar habitable zones, and high stellar variation experienced by planets of red dwarf stars are impediments to their planetary habitability, the ubiquity and longevity of red dwarfs are positive factors. Determining how the interactions between these factors affect habitability may help to reveal the frequency of extraterrestrial life and intelligence.

Intense tidal heating caused by the proximity of planets to their host red dwarfs is a major impediment to life developing in these systems.[1][2] When other tidal effects are considered, such as the extreme temperature differences created by one side of habitable-zone planets permanently facing the star and the other perpetually turned away and lack of planetary axial tilts,[3] reduce the probability of life around red dwarfs.[2] Non-tidal factors, such as extreme stellar variation, spectral energy distributions shifted to the infrared relative to the Sun, and small circumstellar habitable zones due to low light output, further reduce the prospects for life in red-dwarf systems.[2]

There are, however, several effects that increase the likelihood of life on red dwarf planets. Intense cloud formation on the star-facing side of a tidally locked planet may reduce overall thermal flux and drastically reduce equilibrium temperature differences between the two sides of the planet.[4] In addition, the sheer number of red dwarfs, which account for about 85%[5] of at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way,[6] increases the number of habitable planets that may be orbiting them; as of 2013, there are expected to be roughly 60 billion habitable red dwarf planets in the Milky Way.[7]

Contents [hide]
1 Red dwarf characteristics
2 Research
2.1 Luminosity and spectral composition
2.2 Tidal effects
2.3 Variability
2.4 Abundance
3 In fiction
4 See also
5 References
6 External links
Red dwarf characteristics[edit]
Red dwarfs[8] are the smallest, coolest, and most common type of star. Estimates of their abundance range from 70% of stars in spiral galaxies to more than 90% of all stars in elliptical galaxies,[9][10] an often quoted median figure being 73% of the stars in the Milky Way (known since the 1990s from radio telescopic observation to be a barred spiral).[11] Red dwarfs are either late K or M spectral type.[12] Given their low energy output, red dwarfs are never visible by the unaided eye from Earth; neither the closest red dwarf to the Sun when viewed individually, Proxima Centauri (which is also the closest star to the Sun), nor the closest solitary red dwarf, Barnard’s star, is anywhere near visual magnitude.

Research[edit]
Luminosity and spectral composition[edit]

Relative star sizes and photospheric temperatures. Any planet around a red dwarf, such as the one shown here, would have to huddle close to achieve Earth-like temperatures, probably inducing tidal lock. See Aurelia. Credit: MPIA/V. Joergens.
For years, astronomers ruled out red dwarfs, with masses ranging from roughly 0.1 to 0.6 solar masses, as potential abodes for life. The low masses of the stars cause the nuclear fusion reactions at their cores to proceed exceedingly slowly, giving them luminosities ranging from a maximum of roughly 3 percent that of the Sun to a minimum of just 0.01 percent.[13] Consequently, any planet orbiting a red dwarf would have to have a low semimajor axis in order to maintain Earth-like surface temperature, from 0.3 astronomical units (AU) for a relatively luminous red dwarf like Lacaille 8760 to 0.032 AU for a smaller star like Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Solar System[14] (such a world would have a year lasting just six days).[15][16]

Much of the low luminosity of a red dwarf falls in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum, with lower energy than the visible light in which the Sun peaks. As a result, photosynthesis on a red dwarf planet would require additional photons to achieve excitation potentials comparable to those needed in Earth photosynthesis for electron transfers, due to the lower average energy level of near-infrared photons compared to visible.[17] Having to adapt to a far wider spectrum to gain the maximum amount of energy, foliage on a habitable red dwarf planet would probably appear black if viewed in visible light.[17]

In addition, because water strongly absorbs red and infrared light, less energy would be available for aquatic life on red dwarf planets.[18] However, a similar effect of preferential absorption by water ice would increase its temperature relative to an equivalent amount of radiation from a Sun-like star, thereby extending the habitable zone of red dwarfs outward.[19]

Tidal effects[edit]
At the close distances that red dwarf planets would have to maintain to their stars in order to maintain liquid water at their surfaces, tidal locking to the host star is likely, causing the planet to rotate around its axis once for every revolution around the star; as a result, one side of the planet would eternally face the star and another side would perpetually face away, creating great extremes of temperature. For many years, it was believed that life on such planets would be limited to a ring-like region known as the terminator, where the star would always appear on the horizon.

In the past, it was believed that efficient heat transfer between the sides of the planet necessitate an atmosphere so thick as to disallow photosynthesis. Due to differential heating, it was argued, a tidally locked planet would experience fierce winds blowing continually towards the night side[citation needed] with permanent torrential rain at the point directly facing the local star,[20] the subsolar point. In the opinion of one author this makes complex life improbable.[21] Plant life would have to adapt to the constant gale, for example by anchoring securely into the soil and sprouting long flexible leaves that do not snap. Animals would rely on infrared vision, as signaling by calls or scents would be difficult over the din of the planet-wide gale. Underwater life would, however, be protected from fierce winds and flares, and vast blooms of black photosynthetic plankton and algae could support the sea life.[22]

In contrast to the previously bleak picture for life, 1997 studies by Robert Haberle and Manoj Joshi of NASA’s Ames Research Center in California have shown that a planet’s atmosphere (assuming it included greenhouse gases CO2 and H2O) need only be 100 millibar, or 10% of Earth’s atmosphere, for the star’s heat to be effectively carried to the night side, a figure well within the bounds of photosynthesis.[23] Research two years later by Martin Heath of Greenwich Community College has shown that seawater, too, could effectively circulate without freezing solid if the ocean basins were deep enough to allow free flow beneath the night side’s ice cap. Additionally, a 2010 study concluded that Earth-like water worlds tidally locked to their stars would still have temperatures above 240 K (−33 °C) on the night side.[24] Climate models constructed in 2013 indicate that cloud formation on tidally locked planets would minimize the temperature difference between the day and the night side, greatly improving habitability prospects for red dwarf planets.[4] Further research, including a consideration of the amount of photosynthetically active radiation, has suggested that tidally locked planets in red dwarf systems might at least be habitable for higher plants.[25]

The existence of a permanent day side and night side is not the only potential setback for life around red dwarfs. Tidal heating experienced by planets in the habitable zone of red dwarfs less than 30% of the mass of the Sun may cause them to be “baked out” and become “tidal Venuses.” [1] Combined with the other impediments to red dwarf habitability,[3] this may make the probability of many red dwarfs hosting life as we know it very low compared to other star types.[2] There may not even be enough water for habitable planets around many red dwarfs;[26] what little water found on these planets, in particular Earth-sized ones, may be located on the cold night side of the planet. In contrast to the predictions of earlier studies on tidal Venuses, though, this “trapped water” may help to stave off runaway greenhouse effects and improve the habitability of red dwarf systems.[27]

Variability[edit]
Red dwarfs are far more variable and violent than their more stable, larger cousins. Often they are covered in starspots that can dim their emitted light by up to 40% for months at a time. On Earth life has adapted in many ways to the similarly reduced temperatures of the winter. Life may survive by hibernating and/or by diving into deep water where temperatures could be more constant. More serious is that the oceans could perhaps freeze over during cold periods. After the cold has ended the planet’s albedo would be higher causing light from the red dwarf to be reflected, reducing planetary temperatures.

At other times, red dwarfs emit gigantic flares that can double their brightness in a matter of minutes.[28] Indeed, as more and more red dwarfs have been scrutinized for variability, more of them have been classified as flare stars to some degree or other. Such variation in brightness could be very damaging for life. Flares might also produce torrents of charged particles that could strip off sizable portions of the planet’s atmosphere.[29] So scientists who subscribe to the Rare Earth hypothesis doubt that red dwarfs could support life amid strong flaring. Tidal-locking would probably result in a relatively low planetary magnetic moment. Active red dwarfs that emit coronal mass ejections would bow back the magnetosphere until it contacted the planetary atmosphere. As a result, the atmosphere would undergo strong erosion, possibly leaving the planet uninhabitable.[30]

Otherwise, it is suggested that if the planet had a magnetic field, it would deflect the particles from the atmosphere (even the slow rotation of a tidally locked M-dwarf planet—it spins once for every time it orbits its star—would be enough to generate a magnetic field as long as part of the planet’s interior remained molten).[31] But actual mathematical models conclude that,[32][33] even under the highest attainable dynamo-generated magnetic field strengths, exoplanets with masses like that of Earth lose a significant fraction of their atmospheres by the erosion of the exobase’s atmosphere by CME bursts and XUV emissions (even those Earth-like planets closer than 0.8 AU—affecting also GK stars— probably lose their atmospheres).

However, the violent flaring period of a red dwarf’s lifecyle is estimated to only last roughly the first 1.2 billion years of its existence. If a planet forms far away from a red dwarf so as to avoid tidelock, and then migrates into the star’s habitable zone after this turbulent initial period, it is possible that life may have a chance to develop.[34]

Another way that life could initially protect itself from radiation, would be remaining underwater until the star had passed through its early flare stage, assuming the planet could retain enough of an atmosphere to produce liquid oceans. The scientists who wrote Aurelia believed that life could survive on land despite a red dwarf flaring. Once life reached onto land, the low amount of UV produced by a quiescent red dwarf means that life could thrive without an ozone layer, and thus never need to produce oxygen.[17]

Abundance[edit]
There is, however, one major advantage that red dwarfs have over other stars as abodes for life: they live a long time. It took 4.5 billion years before humanity appeared on Earth, and life as we know it will see suitable conditions for as little as half a billion years more.[35] Red dwarfs, by contrast, could live for trillions of years, because their nuclear reactions are far slower than those of larger stars, meaning that life both would have longer to evolve and longer to survive. Furthermore, although the odds of finding a planet in the habitable zone around any specific red dwarf are unknown, the total amount of habitable zone around all red dwarfs combined is equal to the total amount around Sun-like stars given their ubiquity.[36] The first super-Earth with a mass of a 3 to 4 times that of Earth’s found in the potentially habitable zone of its star is Gliese 581 g, and its star, Gliese 581, is indeed a red dwarf. Although tidally locked, it is thought possible that at its terminator liquid water may well exist.[37] The planet is thought to have existed for approximately 7 billion years and has a large enough mass to support an atmosphere.

Another possibility could come in the far future, when according to computer simulations a red dwarf becomes a blue dwarf as it is exhausting its hydrogen supply. As this kind of star is more luminous than the previous red dwarf, planets orbiting it that were frozen during the former stage could be thawed during the several billions of years this evolutionary stage lasts (5 billion years, for example, for a 0.16 solar mass star), giving life an opportunity to appear and evolve.[38]

In fiction[edit]
In Olaf Stapledon’s 1937 science fiction novel Star Maker, one of the many alien civilizations in the Milky Way he describes is located in the terminator zone of a tidally locked planet of a red dwarf system. This planet is inhabited by intelligent plants that look like carrots with arms, legs, and a head, which “sleep” part of the time by inserting themselves in soil on plots of land and absorbing sunlight through photosynthesis, and which are awake part of the time, emerging from their plots of soil as locomoting beings who participate in all the complex activities of a modern industrial civilization. Stapledon also describes how life evolved on this planet.[39]

In Larry Niven’s “Draco Tavern” stories, the highly advanced Chirpsithra aliens evolved on a tide-locked oxygen world around a red dwarf. However, no detail is given beyond that it was about 1 terrestrial mass, a little colder, and used red dwarf sunlight.

Superman’s home, Krypton, was in orbit around a red star called Rao which in some stories is described as being a red dwarf.

In Stephen Baxter’s Ark, after the earth is completely submerged by the oceans a small group of humans embark on an interstellar journey eventually making it to a planet named Earth III. The planet is cold, tidally locked and the plant life is black (in order to better absorb the light from the red dwarf).

 

 

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