Most stars may have much more time to form

Previous studies have estimated the disk lifetime by examining the proportion of young stars of
various ages that still remain in the disk. But Pfalzner and her colleagues found something
strange: the farther the
star cluster is from Earth, the shorter the estimated lifetime of the disk. Why does the lifetime of
the protoplanetary disk depend on its distance from us?

The answer is very simple:

No. But in more distant star clusters, most stars are more difficult to see. “When you look far
away, you see bigger stars,” says Pfalzner. "Basically, you can't see low-mass stars." But the
lowest-mass stars predominate. These stars, orange and red dwarfs, are cooler, smaller, and
dimmer than the Sun.

There, Falzner and her colleagues studied only the nearest young star cluster within 650 light-
years of her from Earth, and found that the proportion of stars with planet-forming disks was
much higher than reported in previous studies. I found high. The analysis showed that "the low-
mass star's disk lifetime is much longer, at her 5 to 10 megayears," than astronomers had
assumed, she says. In contrast, disks around more massive stars are known to break apart
faster, probably because brighter light from the Sun pushes gas and dust away faster.