The Potential of Planets Orbiting Red Dwarf Stars to Support Oxygenic Photosynthesis and Complex Life

Understand

We review the latest findings on extra-solar planets and their potential to support Earth-like life.

• Focusing on planets orbiting Red Dwarf (RD) stars, the most abundant stellar type, we show that including RDs as potential host stars could increase the probability of finding biotic planets by a factor of up to a thousand, and reduce the estimate of the distance to our nearest biotic neighbor by up to 10.
• We argue that binary and multiple star systems need to be taken into account when discussing exoplanet habitability.
• Early considerations indicated that conditions on RD planets would be inimical to life, as their Habitable Zones (where liquid water could exist) would be so close as to make planets tidally locked to their star.