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In the future, the brightest empires will be born around dying stars.

Yeah. will be born around dying stars. Colonizing other star systems in this galaxy is probably one of the most foundational topics we cover on this show, and a few weeks back we looked at colonizing red dwarfs, those smallest of stars which

outnumber all the other types of stars combined. I mentioned at the time that even though

they were the most numerous, they were far less bright, amounting to less than a percent of the

current starlight in the universe, and that they probably wouldn't have the most planets either.

Both those honors belong to giant

stars and I thought we should follow up looking at colonizing dwarf stars by looking at colonizing

giant ones too. As we will see today, such systems around giant stars may be crowded

with dozens of planets, all potentially habitable, and each taking decades or even centuries

to orbit their star.

However, as I was writing that sequel, I began feeling like it was a topic that needed

to be broken into a few episodes instead.

So this week is not just a sequel episode, but also the first of three episodes, or a second

of four perhaps.

In a couple weeks we will follow up with

...