If some stars that are lightyears away are dead, does that mean the exoplanets we find are also dead?

Question

I get really excited over exoplanets that are Earth-like so I’m wondering how this works.

In: Planetary Science

Answer 1

Kinda depends. Keep in mind stars are really big and really bright, therefore we can see them from really far away. The exoplanets we can see are much much smaller so they are much closer than the dead stars we can see. As a result, we know how far back in time we’re seeing them and can make an educated guess on if they’re “dead” or not. Obvious we don’t know if they actually contain life or if they have an intact atmosphere. But we know what kind of a sun they have. The life cycles of a star a measured in billions of years so if it’s 5,000 light years away, we’re basically seeing it in real-time relative to that sort of scale of time.