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Updated: Jun 20, 2026

Surface Mapping of Earth-like Exoplanets using Single Point Light Curves
Published on: May 10, 2020
The distribution of stars most likely to harbor intelligent life
Daniel P Whitmire1, John J Matese
1Department of Physics, University of Louisiana at Lafayette , Lafayette, Louisiana, USA. whitmire@louisiana.edu
Abstract:
Simple heuristic models and recent numerical simulations show that the probability of habitable planet formation increases with stellar mass. We combine those results with the distribution of main-sequence stellar masses to obtain the distribution of stars most likely to possess habitable planets as a function of stellar lifetime. We then impose the self-selection condition that intelligent observers can only find themselves around a star with a lifetime greater than the time required for that observer to have evolved, T(i). This allows us to obtain the stellar timescale number distribution for a given value of T(i). Our results show that for habitable planets with a civilization that evolved at time T(i) = 4.5 Gyr the median stellar lifetime is 13 Gyr, corresponding approximately to a stellar type of G5, with two-thirds of the stars having lifetimes between 7 and 30 Gyr, corresponding approximately to spectral types G0-K5. For other values of T(i) the median stellar lifetime changes by less than 50%.
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