Until now, the sole examples of sentient life have been found on Earth only. We can’t say this is because of the lack of trying on our part, as numerous spacecraft have been sent out into our solar system, but still remain sole.

A study to be published in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle has looked into the likelihood that life as known to us may not need a star similar to our sun but can possibly emerge on planets orbiting quite tinnier, weaker stars. In case we consider the odds of life around non-sun-like stars, the case would be that the universe is probably quite more habitable in the coming time than at present.

The paper’s lead author from Harvard University, Avi Loeb, said, “It’s natural for us to think that we are the most common form of life, simply because that’s the only one that we know of. Therefore, people assumed that being next to star like the sun was the most likely place for life to emerge”.

In case we keep aside the thought that we require a sun-like star, then there is a whole fresh class of stars, tinnier and weaker than the sun that will suddenly start looking good candidates. They are known as low mass stars.

Though the stars emit less light and heat in comparison to our powerful sun, they still throw out sufficient for the creation of potentially habitable zones that may support liquid water on nearby orbiting rocky planets. Such kinds of stars aren’t just common in the universe in comparison to sun-like stars, but also possess much significantly longer life spans of over 1,000 times that our sun’s.

With the help of the information, Loeb came up with a thought that there are lots of chances that life could emerge in the distant future around one such low mass star in comparison to emerging presently on a sun-orbiting planet such as Earth.

According to a report in Gizmodo by Ria Misra, "So far, the only examples of sentient life we’ve found are right here on our own planet. It’s not for lack of trying, though—we’ve sent out spacecraft deep into our solar system and, so far, still remain alone. What if the problem isn’t where we are looking, though, but when?"

“It’s natural for us to think that we are the most common form of life, simply because that’s the only one that we know of,” lead author of the paper, Harvard University’s Avi Loeb, told Gizmodo. “Therefore, people assumed that being next to star like the sun was the most likely place for life to emerge.”

In other words, we may be alone in the universe right now. But that’s only because we showed up long before life really started to get going. If this hypothesis is the correct one, then the real explosion of life in the universe hasn’t yet happened—and likely won’t happen for trillions of years after us.

A report published in CS Monitor revealed, "Earth may have developed life prematurely and that as the universe continues to evolve, it will be much better suited to supporting life in the distant future than it is at present, according to a study by Avi Loeb a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and colleagues at the University of Oxford, published Monday in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics."

"The general idea that many people subscribe to is that, since we exist next to a star like the Sun in a galaxy like the Milky Way, for life to exist you need these conditions," Loeb told Popular Science.

"The universe of the future will be a much better place for planets," Pratika Dayal, a researcher at the University of Groningen's Kapteyn Astronomical Institute in the Netherlands, who studies the evolution of early galaxies, told Smithsonian Magazine.