Habitable zones for high- and low-mass stars

The location of a star’s habitable zone also depends upon its mass. Smaller stars like the Sun survive far longer than do high-mass stars. High-mass stars have lifetimes of only millions of years, whereas advanced life took billions of years to develop on Earth. Thus, even if Earth-like planets formed around high-mass stars at distances where liquid water was stable, it is unlikely that benign conditions would exist long enough on these planets for life to form and evolve into advanced organisms.

At the other end of the mass spectrum, the smallest, faintest stars can last for trillions of years. However, these cool dwarf stars emit almost all of their luminosity at infrared wavelengths, which may be difficult for life to harness, and they typically display larger luminosity variations than do Sun-type stars. In addition, in order for a planet to remain within the habitable zone of a faint star, it would have to orbit so close that tidal forces raised on the planet would cause the same hemisphere always to face the star (just as the Moon’s near side always faces Earth). As a result, there would be no day-night cycle, and the planet’s atmosphere, unless it was sufficiently thick, would freeze onto the surface of the cold, perpetually dark hemisphere. (However, if the planet had a sufficiently massive atmosphere, winds would redistribute heat and the atmosphere would not freeze.) Moreover, the high temperatures within the habitable zones of faint stars suggest that such planets are likely to lack the atmospheric gases required by life.

Galactic habitable zone

The concept of a stellar habitable zone has been extended to a planet’s location in the Milky Way Galaxy. Near the centre of the Milky Way, stars are typically much closer to one another than they are farther out on the spiral arms, where the Sun is located. At the galactic centre, therefore, phenomena such as supernovae might present a greater hazard to life than they would in the region where Earth is located. On the other hand, in the outer regions of the Milky Way beyond the location of Earth, there are fewer stars. Since the bulk of a terrestrial planet is composed of chemical elements that were produced within stars, the material out of which new stars are being formed may not have enough of those elements necessary for Earth-like planets to grow. Considerations of this type have led to the concept of a galactic habitable zone, analogous to a stellar habitable zone. The concept of a galaxy’s habitable zone may well be viable, but the extent and boundaries of such a region are far more difficult to quantify than those of a star’s habitable zone.