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7/10/2025, 1:58:32 PM
>>63963615
The habitable zones are absolutely small, but enormous relative to the size of the systems. The proportion of the gravitational neighborhood that's habitable is much higher. As for the emission spectrum, it's not really useful to think that most of the light is emitted as IR, because the key thing that I'm getting at is that basically none of it is emitted as UV (or blues etc). For "normal" red dwarves (ie M type, not L type), you're still getting plenty of light in the visible spectrum for a planet that's in the habitable zone, it's just that practically none of it is in higher wavelengths that potentially damage cells and stuff. Plants are green because their energy generation mechanism can either take a blue or red photon (which they can do 1 or 2 electrons worth of work with respectively) but reflect green because it's at an awkward 1.5 units of work and would damage the sites for 1 electron activation but not activate the ones for 2 electrons. Similarly they need to protect themselves from UV etc with cellular processes and structures that would be less necessary if you had less of it to worry about. An ideal environment for growing genetically engineered plants optimised for efficiency (ie light energy in:caloric energy or nutrients out) you'd want as little of the light to be above, say, 600 or maybe even 650nm (assuming then you only use chlorophyll a and eliminate b production altogether) of energy as possible so you could dispense with all the effort that gets wasted on protecting from higher energy stuff and just yield more.
>>63962895
Yeah I mentioned that, although we don't really know how common or frequent it is (because it's hard for us to observe any red dwarves except for the ones really close to us, and there seems to be a lot of variation in that from the ones we can observe). The total known proportion of red dwarves that are also flare stars is tiny, although even non-flare red dwarfs are more active than other stars.
The habitable zones are absolutely small, but enormous relative to the size of the systems. The proportion of the gravitational neighborhood that's habitable is much higher. As for the emission spectrum, it's not really useful to think that most of the light is emitted as IR, because the key thing that I'm getting at is that basically none of it is emitted as UV (or blues etc). For "normal" red dwarves (ie M type, not L type), you're still getting plenty of light in the visible spectrum for a planet that's in the habitable zone, it's just that practically none of it is in higher wavelengths that potentially damage cells and stuff. Plants are green because their energy generation mechanism can either take a blue or red photon (which they can do 1 or 2 electrons worth of work with respectively) but reflect green because it's at an awkward 1.5 units of work and would damage the sites for 1 electron activation but not activate the ones for 2 electrons. Similarly they need to protect themselves from UV etc with cellular processes and structures that would be less necessary if you had less of it to worry about. An ideal environment for growing genetically engineered plants optimised for efficiency (ie light energy in:caloric energy or nutrients out) you'd want as little of the light to be above, say, 600 or maybe even 650nm (assuming then you only use chlorophyll a and eliminate b production altogether) of energy as possible so you could dispense with all the effort that gets wasted on protecting from higher energy stuff and just yield more.
>>63962895
Yeah I mentioned that, although we don't really know how common or frequent it is (because it's hard for us to observe any red dwarves except for the ones really close to us, and there seems to be a lot of variation in that from the ones we can observe). The total known proportion of red dwarves that are also flare stars is tiny, although even non-flare red dwarfs are more active than other stars.
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