Revisiting Water's Fate Around Low-Mass Stars

If water is the source of life, then finding the source of water certainly qualifies as a worthy astrobiological endeavor. Scientists have formulated certain scenarios for how our planet became wet and stayed wet, but other planets may not have been able to tap this same source.

One place where water availability could be a problem is around low-mass stars.

"Low-mass stars are appealing from an astrobiology point of view because there are so many of them," says Fred Ciesla of the University of Chicago.

The class of M dwarf stars – which weigh between 10 and 50 percent the mass of our Sun – are the most common stars in our galaxy. A recent analysis of data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft showed that six percent of these red dwarf stars have habitable Earth-sized planets.