Goldilocks Zone Redefined


Heard of the Goldilocks Zone? It was a term defined nearly 2 decades back to refer to a belt around a star that scientists felt would be right for life to exist. Any closer and things would be too hot; any farther and it would be too cold. Hence the name of the belt after the fussy girl from the fairy tale.

Well, since then satellites and telescopes have collected a lot more data about the atmosphere of other planets. And since the atmosphere affects how much heat a planet absorbed (if you hadn’t slept through most of your schooling days, you’d have known that), it follows that all the new data should trigger a revision of the Goldilocks Zone limits.

So a team of astronomers did just that. Based on the data, they pushed back the Goldilocks belt further back from the respective star. That move obviously means some of the planets earlier considered good candidates for life would now be too close to the fire and need to be dropped from the prospective candidates list.

Now comes the fun part: by this new definition, good old earth is too hot for life! And here we thought that the earth has done a terrific job of sustaining life for what, a few billion years maybe! Then again, what do we non-scientists know, right? And as an article joked on the Net:
“we are all going to have to move to a planet that could support life, as this one clearly can’t. Get packing, everyone.”

Jokes apart, why did the new definition based on more data than before go so spectacularly wrong? The answer is “clouds”. They save the earth from getting overheated. And here’s the thing: clouds are just one among the kind of things that other planets have that we can’t see or get data about. Which just drives home the point that the Goldilocks Zone is based on incomplete data.

So expect changes to the Goldilocks Zone as time passes, even if the next revision doesn’t give us as much to poke fun at.

Comments

  1. KumarFebruary 2, 2013 at 3:19 PM

    I liked it when the Goldilocks Zone, the proposed basis to define planet locations that would support life, makes Earth uninhabitable! Laughable no doubt. It is almost like a bureaucrat vehemently declaring to a person who asked some question, "unless you produce a life certificate, you can't be considered a living person!" (Some bureaucrats continue stare at this joke and demand, "Where/what is the joke. I can's understand.")

    There is also a joke about some physicist of reputation declaring this law of physics: no plane can be built to fly! It becomes a joke if we know that within days of this publication of the no-fly theory of physics, the Wright brothers made their maiden flight. Fortunately, the Wright brothers were no scholars of physics - they were just mechanics, in their mindset.

    There is another joke of a similar kind: According to physics (as per some physicists) the bumble bee should not be flying at all. I don't know what the scientist said when he was shown a bumble bee flying. Maybe he said, "Humbug!"

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