BooksScience

Under A Crimson Sun: Prospects For Life In A Red Dwarf System by David S. Stevenson (book review).

Under this long title, ‘Under A Crimson Sun: Prospects For Life In A Red Dwarf System,’ author David S. Stevenson actually gives the history of the past 30 years of the discovery of planets in other star systems, with diagrams to show how it was done. His contention is that it will be easier to find life in the nearby red dwarf systems; that is where the focus should be. I suspect to some of you, spotting planets orbiting distant stars must seem like magic, but really it’s spotting giant planets like Jupiter high-cupping against their star, which would indicate there are other planets further in.

The second section is about the geology and associated sciences of our planet first and the importance of tectonic plates to shake up the surface because it raises various minerals to the surface. For my part, I’m not entirely convinced that all our water originates from comets, as there’s no assurance that this phenomenon holds true for other star systems. Add to that, there are still enough comets coming into our own star system, and yet none of them come close to the Earth, let alone get attracted this way. Stevenson makes a firm case that life doesn’t necessarily need carbon dioxide or oxygen until they become more complex. The only thing he doesn’t address is whether we have different building blocks for DNA because we simply don’t know, although I think anything different would have to have similar functions.

The third section looks 25 light-years away at the red dwarf Gliese 581d and the triple star Gliese 667a/b/c, the latter having a greater chance of developing life simply because of the unusual orbits of its planets.

This book’s opening sections contain so much preparation that they could serve as a basis for exploring any type of planetary system. I agree with Stevenson that any planetary system of a red dwarf star is going to have difficulty developing complex life. However, when you look at our own world and the number of attempts it went through before we got our own evolutionary development and then nearly lost it again when the dinosaur dynasty was destroyed by that meteorite, it could quite easily have wiped out the nascent mammals as well. If anything, evolution has shown it doesn’t have a memory of failure and just keeps going until it encases a planet with life. Earth cannot be the sole example of this phenomenon; only the distance proves that it has occurred elsewhere. Whether it will have the same components we have in DNA remains to be seen.

GF Willmetts

January 2025

(pub: Springer, 2013. 324 page illustrated enlarged paperback. Price: varies. ISBN: 978-1-4614-8132-4)

check out website: www.springer.com

UncleGeoff

Geoff Willmetts has been editor at SFCrowsnest for some 21 plus years now, showing a versatility and knowledge in not only Science Fiction, but also the sciences and arts, all of which has been displayed here through editorials, reviews, articles and stories. With the latter, he has been running a short story series under the title of ‘Psi-Kicks’ If you want to contribute to SFCrowsnest, read the guidelines and show him what you can do. If it isn’t usable, he spends as much time telling you what the problems is as he would with material he accepts. This is largely how he got called an Uncle, as in Dutch Uncle. He’s not actually Dutch but hails from the west country in the UK.

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