How well do you know the Sun? It hasn’t always looked the way it does today. Billions of years ago, the Sun was fainter but also more active, throwing out huge flares of radiation in powerful tantrums. This “young Sun” helped shape the evolution of life as we know it. By understanding what our Sun was like when life emerged on Earth, scientists can look to other stars in the galaxy and think about whether life could emerge on planets there, too. Vladimir Airapetian, scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, explains what researchers hope to find as they gaze beyond our solar system.

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