Globular Clusters as Cradles of Life and Advanced Civilizations
R. Di Stefano, A. Ray

TL;DR
Globular clusters, being ancient and densely packed stellar systems, may serve as promising sites for life and advanced civilizations due to their stable habitable zones, proximity, and potential for interstellar communication, despite some risks.
Contribution
This paper models globular clusters to identify stable habitable zones and evaluates their potential for hosting advanced civilizations, highlighting their suitability for SETI efforts.
Findings
Large regions in globular clusters can support long-term habitable planetary orbits.
Globular clusters may host more advanced civilizations than the Galactic disk.
Wide-orbit and free-floating planets increase habitable opportunities in clusters.
Abstract
Globular clusters are ancient stellar populations with no star formation or core-collapse supernovae. Several lines of evidence suggest that globular clusters are rich in planets. If so, and if advanced civilizations can develop there, then the distances between these civilizations and other stars would be far smaller than typical distances between stars in the Galactic disk. The relative proximity would facilitate interstellar communication and travel. However, the very proximity that promotes interstellar travel also brings danger, since stellar interactions can destroy planetary systems. However, by modeling globular clusters and their stellar populations, we find that large regions of many globular clusters can be thought of as "sweet spots" where habitable-zone planetary orbits can be stable for long times. We also compute the ambient densities and fluxes in the regions within…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSpace Science and Extraterrestrial Life · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation
