Friday, February 1, 2013

Earth Kicked Out Of Our Sun's Habitable/Goldilocks Zone

Not only is this interesting in the sense that it is great science, but it also shows that we should always check and double check our generally accepted assumptions.

As New Scientist states

Shockingly, Earth – which used to be smack-bang in the middle of our sun's habitable zone – is now a scant million kilometres away from the warm edge, so almost too hot for liquid water. Of course, we know Earth is robustly life-friendly – the mismatch is probably because neither definition accounts for clouds, which reflect sunlight away from Earth.

As Earth shows, the Goldilocks zone is no ultimate judge of habitability, something exoplanet researchers have known for years. As well as clouds, volcanic activity or the location of other moons or planets in the solar system, may be important for life to develop on planets like Earth

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