We are orbiting a yellow dwarf star:
On the grand cosmic scale, our little corner of the Universe isn’t all that special – this idea lies at the heart of the Copernican principle. Yet there’s one major aspect about our planet that’s peculiar indeed: Our Sun is a yellow dwarf.
Because our home star is what we know most intimately, it would be tempting to assume that yellow and white dwarf stars (FGK dwarfs) are common elsewhere in the cosmos. However, they’re far from the most multitudinous stars in the galaxy; that particular feather belongs in the cap of another type of star – red dwarf (M dwarfs).
Not only do red dwarfs make up as much as 75 percent of all stars in the Milky Way, they are much cooler and longer-lived than stars like the Sun. Much, much longer lived.
We expect our Sun to live around 10 billion years; red dwarf stars are expected to live trillions. So long, in fact, that none have yet reached the end of their main sequence lifespan during the entire 13.4 billion years since the Big Bang.
Since red dwarfs are so abundant, and so stable, and since we shouldn’t automatically consider ourselves to be cosmically special, the fact we’re not orbiting a red dwarf should therefore be somewhat surprising. And yet, here we are, orbiting a not-so-common yellow dwarf.
Michelle Starr, “The Red Sky Paradox Will Make You Question Our Very Place in The Universe” at ScienceAlert (December 27, 2021)
Don’t want to spoil the ending of the story.