Monday, 24 August 2009

Why is Mars considered the outer edge of the "goldilocks zone"?

We could err by being 'chauvinists' as Carl Sagan would have said, because we are reasoning taking in account the biology and chemistry of life of 1 planet only: a sample of 1...



Before 1995, we thought that alien solar systems would be similar to ours, with small rocky planets closer to the star and giant planets further out.
Almost nobody thought about circumbinary planets, planets with periods under one day, scorched jupiters ridiculously close to their stars, ultra compact systems with four or more planets crowded in few tenths of Astronomical Units, free-floating cloudy dwarfs with precipitation of melted iron and hot sand (brown dwarfs? planets? planemos?) and the list goes on and on.



Enceladus, that is quite small for planetary standards and that are far from the most optimistic and inclusive Goldilocks boundary has a subsurface ocean, of water.

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