Are Red Dwarf Planets Habitable?

The most common stars in the Universe are red dwarfs. These are small, faint, cool stars that range from one-tenth to one-half the diameter of the Sun and which have extraordinarily-long lifetimes. Recent surveys have discovered Earth-size planets around several red dwarf stars, including Proxima Centauri (the nearest star to the Sun). What might conditions be like on worlds orbiting such unusual stars, and could any of them be habitable? Have any been identified as "best candidates" to consider as abodes for life?

Speaker: Gibor Basri, UC Berkeley