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In the children story named Goldilocks and the three bears, a little girl enters an empty bear’s home to find 3 bowls of porridge. Two of them being too hot or too cold while one being just right. Tired after a long journey Goldilocks wished to relax. Out of 3 chairs, 2 were too big and one was just right. Ironically it broke afterwards. Before the bears returned, goldilocks slept in the just right bed which was neither too soft nor too hard.
In the scientific community the goldilocks zone or circumstellar habitable zone is the area around the star that could support life. Similar to the little girl in the story, life is very picky when choosing planets. Human’s obviously won’t live a week without water and that’s mostly the same with other animals, plants and microorganisms. This is because water is a solvent and is used for transporting nutrients and minerals to where their needed.
Water in our solar system is quite common, delving inside asteroid c-type, seas of ice on the surface of Europa Jupiter’s moon and ice on mercury’s pole. Finding liquid water is rare as the planet needs to be in the right area circling the sun therefore it wouldn’t be too hot like mercury or cold like Pluto. Just right. The right distance is different as there are many types of stars
Mars, a planet not far from ours edges itself in the goldilocks zone yet it does not contain water or to a bigger extent, life. This is because Mars being a planet smaller than ours with one-tenth the mass of earth has an atmospheric pressure of 0.6% the sea level pressure on earth with temperatures of −63 °C. Liquid water is unstable on mars and thus either evaporates or freezes instantly.
“Some liquid water may occur transiently on the Martian surface today but only under certain conditions.”-wikipedia.com. For so long of being told there was no water on mars, this disproves it.
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Judging from mars surface scientists predict that there once was large bodies of water on mars. The way water carves out streams forming rivers and paths makes mars resemble a desert that once flourished. Round pebbles and smooth rocks that have been found on mars supports the idea of water as it causes erosion.
Being at the right distance from the sun is not the only factor for life to thrive. The right atmospheric pressure, the right size and now carbon dioxide levels. Venus containing abundant CO2 bocks out the atmosphere disallowing light to reflect and making it a very hot planet, even though it’s inside the goldilocks zone.
Sunlight might not be relevant anymore when there are other ways to heat up water. Europa, Jupiter’s moon, is heated up by Jupiter’s massive gravity that it is predicted to harbor life under its icy surface.
http://www.planetaryresources.com/asteriods/composition/
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/water-vital-to-life.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars
http://www.universetoday.com/47905/why-is-venus-so-hot/
http://lcogt.net/spacebook/what-are-requirements-life-arise-and-survive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldilocks_planet
http://www.iceandclimate.nbi.ku.dk/research/ice_other_planets/ice_on_mars/no_liquid_water/
