Quelle fascinante découverte:
This planet is extremely interesting for several reasons. First, it’s old. Very old, actually. In fact, it’s about 11.5-billion years old. That makes the planet nearly three times older than Earth, or to envision it another way, the universe itself is only about 2-billion years older than this planet – either works.
Consider for a moment just how far life has come on our planet in just 4.5-billion years. Then, see if your imagination will allow you to contemplate how much further along the evolutionary ladder any form of life might be compared to us if it flickered into existence on a planet as old as Kapteyn b.
Needless to say, any creatures dwelling in this planetary system has the potential to be some of the oldest, most evolved life found anywhere in the universe.
(...) Kapteyn b – a “super-Earth,” weighing in at about 5 times the mass of our blue marble - is thought to orbit in the habitable zone of its red dwarf star. Because red dwarfs are much cooler, smaller and fully convectional, they, generally speaking, live far longer than stars of other spectral types; sometimes lasting for trillions of years. Understandably, the extended life-span of a red dwarf extinguishes one of the largest threats all species must eventually face; being gobbled up by the star that it relies on for sustenance.