Weekly Weird News · ufo-aliens

Filed by Max the Cryptid Reporter

In a blow to Avatar fans everywhere, Northern Arizona University boffins have crunched the numbers on 29 nearby rocky exoplanets and concluded that most are probably teeming with nothing more exciting than microbes—though a lucky three might host Dune-style sandworms. The culprit? Red dwarf stars dish out so little light, and tidally locked planets offer only half a surface for photosynthesis, that even billions of extra years leave alien evolution stuck in the microbial mud. TRAPPIST-1e, for instance, has fixed just 21% of Earth's carbon, meaning Fermi's famous "Where are they?" may have a depressingly gritty answer: they're all still single-celled, or possibly very, very long.