"In the cosmic game of hide and seek, finding planets with just the right size and just the right temperature seems only a matter of time."
Life as we know it flourished on Hoth, so the temp range must be pretty broad.
A relatively normal-seeming person recently told me that the moon landing was a hoax. Good thing Buzz Aldrin wasn't there.
OK, so if a planets orbit at a distance from its star that permits the presence of liquid water on the surface, what are the odds that liquid water will be on the surface?
Water does not appear to be all that rare, in its various forms. In our tiny little dust mote neighborhood, there's evidence that Mercury harbors a bit of ice, as well as our moon. There's water ice on Mars. And water, it seems, -- maybe more than on this planet, on Europa, satellite of Jupiter. I would be surpised if there's not water vapor in the atmospheres of the four gas giants. And some of the Kuiuper Belt bodies seem to be nothing but water ice.
Having liquid water, i.e., the primary ingredient for "life as we know it", probably depends only on being not too close and not too far from your star. And there are so blasted many stars.
Posted by: justcorbly | Dec 20, 2011 at 07:06 PM