Red Dwarfs May Be Safe Havens For Life
in [Physics]
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From: Yousuf Khan on 5 Jul 2010 05:03 Red Dwarfs May Be Safe Havens For Life : Discovery News "But there is one big catch. Young red dwarfs have a petulant youth stretching over billions of years. Titanic stellar flares erupt without warning and blast out lethal doses of ultraviolet radiation. Ocean life on a planet may be safe from the UV just a few feet underwater and still extract enough light for photosynthesis. But anything living on the surface could get fried without a liberal coating of Sunscreen 2000. But we now have a glimmer of hope for red dwarf planets. Astrobiologist Antigona Segura of the Universidad Nacional Aut�noma de M�xico (UNAM) in Mexico City, simulated how a 1985 flare from the nearby red dwarf AD Leonis would have affected a hypothetical Earth-like planet orbiting a dwarf. Agular dwarf-large He found that UV radiation actually split molecules of oxygen to create more ozone than it destroyed. The simulation made a thicker ozone layer in the planetary atmosphere such that the surface experienced no more radiation than is typical on a sunny day on Earth." http://news.discovery.com/space/red-dwarfs-may-be-safe-havens-for-life.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1
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