Lecture 34: Habitable Zones around Stars

Which stars are the most hospitable for life? This lecture examines the factors affecting the habitability of stars, with a goal of understanding where we should search for life-bearing planets. We will do this by generalizing the idea of a Habitable Zone developed for the Sun back in Lecture 30. In this context, we find that the best places to search for life would be rocky planets in the habitable zones of low-mass main-sequence stars. There are a number of caveats we will discuss - tidal locking, stellar flares, and UV radiation - and limitations to the approach, but it seems to be a good place to start our search. Recorded live on 2009 Nov 13 in Room 1005 Smith Laboratory on the Columbus campus of The Ohio State University.