Stars much older than ours will tend to be the product of a single supernova event and hence any planetary accretion disc around them will be poor in metals such as iron. Technology development by an intelligent race in such an environment would be trickier, perhaps.
Stars much younger than ours probably don't have planetary bodies that can sustain complex life "as we know it". It took well over a billion years after the Sun formed for Earth to cool down to the point where liquid water could exist and another couple of billion years before vertebrate life evolved.
There's also the Galactic orbit -- Earth's sun seems to have avoided entering closer to the Galactic core over the past dozen or so go-arounds. It is believed the core areas have much higher radiation densities due to particle interactions and the black hole posited to be at the centre and that radiation could kill off nascent lifeforms on less fortunate planets over time.
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Date: 2012-06-21 08:05 pm (UTC)Stars much younger than ours probably don't have planetary bodies that can sustain complex life "as we know it". It took well over a billion years after the Sun formed for Earth to cool down to the point where liquid water could exist and another couple of billion years before vertebrate life evolved.
There's also the Galactic orbit -- Earth's sun seems to have avoided entering closer to the Galactic core over the past dozen or so go-arounds. It is believed the core areas have much higher radiation densities due to particle interactions and the black hole posited to be at the centre and that radiation could kill off nascent lifeforms on less fortunate planets over time.