'Trillions of earths' around red dwarfs
A new study says the number of stars in the universe is three times more than previously thought and that there is far less dark matter than earlier proposed.
Analyzing the light coming from elliptical galaxies, scientists found that they contained hundreds of millions of small, cool stars known as red dwarfs. According to the study published in the journal Nature, red dwarfs make up 80 percent of the star population.
The findings also brought hope since they suggest there is less dark matter in these galaxies than previously thought. Astronomers can understand stars far better than they do dark matter. Red dwarfs do not emit enough visible light to be seen from the Earth and only affect the overall glow from a galaxy. In these galaxies there are little pieces of the rainbow that are missing, wavelengths that have much less strength than the rest. Scientists, therefore used spectral analysis to find the so-called absorption lines that are known to be made by the red dwarf stars.