ASTR 5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 10: Solar Core, Runaway Greenhouse Effect, Realclimate
Document Summary
Chapter 10: the nature and evolution of habitability. Habitable zone is the region around a star in which planets could potentially have surface temperatures at which liquid water could exist, and its important when we consider the challenges of finding life in other star systems. Simply being in the habitable zone does not make a world habitable, as is the case of the moon: describe several ways in which it may be possible to have habitability outside the habitable zone. Because of their similar sizes and compositions, it"s expected that earth and venus had similar levels of water vapor and carbon dioxide outgassed. Venus has very little water, most of it present in its atmosphere (earth has 10,000 times more water than venus). It"s thought that ultraviolet light form the sun broke apart water molecules in venus"s atmosphere, the hydrogen atoms then escaping to space, ensuring that water molecules could never reform.
