Our home galaxy isn’t as hospitable to life as you might think. Cosmic radiation, supernova explosions, and collisions with small galaxies make much of the Milky Way too hellish for biology. But a detailed new simulation locates quiet and fertile neighborhoods, including a surprising locale: wispy streams of stars flung far beyond the main body of the Milky Way.
To support life as we know it, planets must have liquid water and orbit in the right place in their solar systems, not too close and not too far from their star. Similarly, life will not emerge or survive for long near the centers of galaxies. Here, the high density of stars means that at any given time several could be exploding, frying off a planet’s ozone layer and exposing any surface life to deadly ultraviolet rays.
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