'Goldilocks' Zone Bigger than Once Thought

The holy grail for finding worlds beyond Earth that are hospitable to life has been planets just the right distance from their mother stars where liquid water can exist on the surface -- the so-called "Goldilocks" zone.

But scientists now say this elusive zone where conditions are not too hot and not too cold for life to exist is far bigger than originally thought.

"When people talk about 'habitable zones,' they mean where there's liquid water on the surface. But there's liquid water elsewhere in the solar system; it's buried under thick sheets of ice on moons," Francis Nimmo, a planetary scientist with the University of California at Santa Cruz, told Discovery News.

http://news.discovery.com/space/goldilocks-zone-exoplanet-moon-life.html

water when we see solar flares?? I thought I read this somewhere on the internets.

you are made from stars.

But I guess you were attempting sardonic science.

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/news/sunwater.html

WATERLOO, Ont. -- An international team of scientists, including a University of Waterloo chemistry professor, has conclusively demonstrated that water (actually steam) does exist on the sun, confirming a breakthrough finding made two years ago.

The team used an innovative method to calculate the water spectrum at sunspot temperatures. The method will be useful in modelling systems with an abundance of extremely hot water molecules, such as forest fires.

The team was led by Oleg Polyansky, a theoretician from Russia's Institute of Applied Physics; Nizhnii Novgorod, who works with co-researcher Jonathan Tennyson, a physicist at University College, London; and UW chemistry Prof. Peter Bernath, an expert in molecular astronomy. Other team members included Serena Viti, a physicist at University College, London; Nikolai Zobov, a physicist at University College, London; and Lloyd Wallace, an astronomer at Kitt Peak National Observatory, Tucson, Ariz.

http://www.youtube.com/v/VFMmzKDonRY

Lawrence M. Krauss is foundation professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration, a professor in the physics department and director of the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University.

The complete lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo

be possible if stars didn't explode.