From Physorg:

"“Our research goes further than previous work which only looked at single properties such as mass or iron content,” says Robles, who is the lead author on the research paper. “We looked at 11 properties that could plausibly be connected with life and did an analysis of these properties: The upshot is that there doesn’t seem to be anything special about the Sun. It seems to be a random star that was blindly pulled out of the bag of all stars.”

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

That's not really new, today I looked up the wiki pages on extraterrestrial life and Drake's equation and they all mentioned the same cited from pretty old knowledge.

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[Foot mouth in put]
Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

Well, I'd say for Drake and the ETH those were some pretty old assumptions whereas this research moves the notion into observational evidence.

None the less, have you a reference that shows previous research dealing with so many properties?

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Well, there were previous observations about Metallicity for example. But of course we have only been able to check out extrasolar planets for a very short while.

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[Foot mouth in put]
Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

I see.

I'd have to say that falls under the "previous work" mentioned in the article.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

The qualities of the star may not be as important as the qualities of the planet, and particularly the qualities of the planet's orbit. I think life may find a window of opportunity around a wide range of stars, but only if the planet it emerges on is suitable and is in a suitable orbit.

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On the other hand, I am not quite sure what Robles and Lineweaver would consider to be an atypical star;
from their data
95% of stars are less massive than the Sun
81% of stars have a higher C/O ratio than the Sun
83% (or is it 92%) of nearby Sun-like stars rotate faster than the Sun (the different figures presumably depend on the definition of Sun-like)
93% of stars have larger galactic orbital eccentricities than the Sun
93% of stars have smaller velocity with respect to the Local Standard of Rest (that is, the Sun moves at a different speed to most of the nearby stars: in fact we move quite a bit more slowly)

Not entirely typical, after all.

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense . OA Flickr set

The solar system is like a billiard's table in a pool hall. It's not so special and it looks like any other table. The only difference is how the billiard's game turned out.

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Fields of Space

LOGIC, n.
The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

In the Year 2525.

"One small step for (a) man. One giant leap for mankind".

If an astronaut doesn't need good grammar, niether does you.

Host of Seraphim

Would non-planetary life be imaginable? Like emerging on an asteroid, or maybe even in a molecular cloud...

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Neptune, Titan, Stars can Frighten...

Dificult to imagine life emerging in space, because it seems to require a lot of random chemical reactions occuring in close proximity. But perhaps Life could be transferred into space, perhaps from the top of an planet's atmosphere, then maybe thrive in space somehow.

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense . OA Flickr set

I had a thought of a creature that lives in symbiosis with a biosphere living inside a large cavity within, like a living terrarium.

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There's the rub, no?

"Suitable" and "suitable orbit" - how do we establish these?
Do they encompass interstellar molecular clouds, comets, planets around wandering failed stars, moons around gas giants, rocky planets et al?

Don't get me wrong, I also think habitability will also be found around a wide range of stars.


So it would appear.

Then again, you list only 5 of the 11 properties considered in the study which, taken together, show the Sun to be typical. Additionally, you neglected to include "...of nearby stars" with your percentages. And picking a nit: those with faster rotation rates do not depend on one's definition; instead, "83% plus/minus 7% of nearby sun-like-mass stars..." is what they state.
None the less, as they point out and discuss, stellar mass and Galactic orbital eccentricty are the most anomolous properties; if these data alone were used in their analysis "the sun would appear mildly anamolous."

So moving beyond a qualitative assessment theirs is a quantification of the degree of the Suns (a)typicality. While there may be other properties associated with habitability, taking these 11 together suggests the Sun to be quite typical, amongst nearby stars that is.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

I don't think we can rule out space just yet.

Circumstellar space: Where chemistry happens for the very first time.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Well, the most significant difference between the Sun and the vast majority of stars is that it is not a red dwarf. In order for life to evolve and thrive on a planet around a red dwarf it needs to jump through a large number of hoops- the low luminosity which leads to a smaller habitable zone, the frequent flares of dangerous UV, the probabity that a planet close to one of these weak stars will be tidally locked.

Altogether that means that complex biospheres may well be rare or absent around the great majority of stars in the galaxy.

I'm hoping that at least some red dwarfs beat the odds; but I don't expect life to be common around the most typical stellar type, which is a shame.

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense . OA Flickr set

I agree Red Dwarfs seem to pose a problem for Life and habitability, but I also think Life on Earth had to jump through a large number of hoops to get where it is.

All too often we've thought the boundaries for Life were drawn and yet we continue to move those lines.

I personally don't think extreme temperature variations, UV flares and lack of light prohibit Life from surviving, adapting and spreading.


ETA: As I'm so find of proclaiming to my children (though in a different context) "Life is tough!"

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

We're one of billions and billions, to be sure.

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol.

Perception isn't reality. It's merely an abstraction thereof, and quite often not a very good one at that.

I am human. Fully human.

(Life as we know it)


Also, life could evolve on a world, like Europa around a red dwarf.

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Fields of Space

LOGIC, n.
The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

In the Year 2525.

"One small step for (a) man. One giant leap for mankind".

If an astronaut doesn't need good grammar, niether does you.

Host of Seraphim