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Protoplanetary Disks Are Smaller Than Expected

Protoplanetary Disks Are Smaller Than Expected

2 comments

·April 5, 2025
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pfdietz

Observational bias is interesting. For example, if you judge by the stars visible to the naked eye, you get a very different sense of the distribution of stellar masses than if you use a telescope, because no class M main sequence stars will be included (the brightest has apparent magnitude 6.7). The intrinsically brightest stars, including many of the famously named ones, are visible to great distances and so are very overrepresented.

The most spectacular form of observational bias could be the presence of life. The planet we are on will always have life (because, we are here and we are life) regardless of how uncommon life actually is in the universe.

vlovich123

Similarly, life is so small that we have to actually travel places multiple times to get a sense of if life exists there and the scope of where we can travel is rather limited to parts of our solar system. So it will seem like we’re the only place with life regardless of how common life is in the universe.