While NASA’s New Horizons flies by Pluto and targets new destinations farther than humans will physically experience in the near future, considering our distance from the Sun could help explain why the Earth can sustain life. What if Earth moved a mile closer to the Sun? Would we all burn up? Would our atmosphere disintegrate? Would we have an extreme runaway greenhouse effect and dry up like Venus? The concept of a habitable zone, sometimes referred to as the “Goldilocks Zone,” is vital to explaining the possibilities.
WOULD MOVING EARTH CLOSER HAVE A BIG EFFECT?
What would happen if Earth were to move a mile closer to the sun? Since the Earth’s orbit is an ellipse, not a circle, its distance from the sun varies from a minimum of 147.1 million kilometers each January to a maximum of about 152.1 million kilometers each July. The range of this distance has little effect on Earth’s weather with the Northern Hemisphere’s summer occurring during the time that Earth is
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If life is possible on these moons, the habitable zone likely isn’t the only answer to why our planet can sustain water and life. Surviving in the habitable zone also depends on the type of star in a solar system. We are lucky to have our type of Sun because it’s neither too big to harm us with deadly solar flares nor too dim like red dwarfs to not provide us with the warmth we need. Gaining insight in what makes Earth different from its neighboring planets could help us understand the likelihood of finding Earth-like worlds in orbit around other stars. According to the 3rd edition of Life in the Universe by Jeffrey Bennett and Seth Shostak, other stars also have their own habitable zones, meaning distances at which a world similar in size to Earth, and with a similar atmosphere, would be habitable, although the sizes of habitable zones are different for different types of