Life Among the Dwarfs

Artist impression of a red dwarf star like Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our sun. (Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; D. Berry)When I was an astronomy-obsessed kid, I learned that most of the stars in our galaxy and beyond are very similar to ourSun. No less an authority than Carl Sagan wrote that "the Sun is an ordinary, even a mediocre star." If that insight diminished the importance of our place in the universe, it also made it seem likely that there must be many other living worlds around