September 8, 2012 | David F. Coppedge

Star Chemistry Constrains Habitable Zone

The chemistry of a parent star can have drastic effects on the habitability of an earth-like planet.

Scientists at the University of Arizona have added another factor to consider when looking for habitable planets.  PhysOrg reported,

As a star evolves, it becomes brighter, causing the habitable zone to move outwards through its solar system. The team’s study indicates that a greater abundance of oxygen, carbon, sodium, magnesium and silicon should be a plus for an inner solar system’s long-term habitability because the abundance of these elements make the star cooler and cause it to evolve more slowly, thereby giving planets in its habitable zone more time to develop life as we know it….

The stellar abundance of oxygen seems crucial in determining how long planets stay in the habitable zone around their host star. If there had been less oxygen in the Sun’s chemical makeup, for example, Earth likely would have been pushed out of the Sun’s habitable zone about a billion years ago, well before complex organisms evolved. Considering the first complex multicellular organisms only arose about 650 million years ago, such a move would have likely destroyed any chance of complex life taking hold on Earth.

There are probably other factors, too: “Habitability is very difficult to quantify because it depends on a huge number of variables, some of which we have yet to identify,” said the university’s assistant professor of School of Earth and Space Exploration, Patrick  Young.
Update 9/11/2012: The BBC News claims that habitable planets may be more abundant due to the fact that water can exist under the surface, even outside the habitable zone where liquid water can exist.  There are, however, constraints on how long a body’s internal heat can last.  Water is not alive; many other factors are required for life.  Even if life were possible in a deep, dark, subsurface ocean, it would not be the kind humans would be able to learn about or would want to contact.  That being so, it remains a theoretical possibility only, not conducive to observation.

Let’s tally up the factors we’ve reported so far that make the “Goldilocks Zone” more complicated than just allowing for liquid water:

  • Galactic Habitable Zone, where a star must be located (09/29/2009);
  • Circumstellar Habitable Zone, the right radius from the star where liquid water can exist (10/08/2010);
  • Continuously Habitable Zone, because too much variety can be lethal (07/21/2007);
  • Temporal Habitable Zone, because habitable zones do not last forever (10/27/2008);
  • Chemical and Thermodynamic Habitable Zone, where water can be liquid (12/30/2003);
  • Ultraviolet Habitable Zone, free from deadly radiation (08/15/2006);
  • Tidal Habitable Zone, which rules out most stars that are small (02/26/2011).
  • Stable Obliquity Habitable Zone (1/12/2012)
  • Stellar Chemistry Habitable Zone (this entry)

The list will probably continue to grow.  Although the current paper assumes billions of years of evolution, it’s a problem for evolutionists of all stripes: atheistic, deistic and theistic.  Why?  They all need billions of years.  Theistic evolutionists, for instance, would need for God to intervene and move the earth as the habitable zone evolves. If the solar system were created much more recently, this is not a problem at all.  The hopes of Carl Sagan and other astronomers of the 1980s for billions and billions of worlds filled with life are looking more simplistic with each new discovery.  The earth is looking more Biblical all the while.

 

 

 

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Comments

  • tokyojim says:

    This is the kind of stuff that needs to be examined in high school and college text books. No one knows this stuff except the evolutionary cosmologists and they’re not going to let the cat out of the bag, that’s for sure.

    Thanks to CEH for this kind of reporting!

  • tokyojim says:

    Let me clarify my previous entry. Cosmologists do good research and publish important papers like the one this article is based on. I’m not trying to criticize the authors of this paper. They published this information so, it’s not like they are trying to keep things a secret.

    However, I have never seen any of them put the information together like this in an easy to understand fashion. And it is my guess that many would not want this type of information in college and high school textbooks. That is a guess. I’d love to be proven wrong!

  • tjguy says:

    Here is another quote from the article:

    “Habitability is very difficult to quantify because it depends on a huge number of variables, some of which we have yet to identify,” says Young. “It also depends on the definition of habitable that we choose to use. We chose to use a relatively simple model that predicts whether a planet can sustain liquid water on its surface with reasonable assumptions about planetary atmospheres.”

    I wonder why they chose “a relatively simple model” for their purposes!

    Also, does anyone not think this statement is really strange?

    “Considering the first complex multicellular organisms only arose about 650 million years ago, such a move would have likely destroyed any chance of complex life taking hold on Earth.”

    The first complex multicellular organisms arose just 650 million years ago?

    Does that mean they think that in the past 650 million years, all the diversity that we see in life on this planet arose? Maybe that is a mistake. I thought life was supposed to have evolved 3.6 – 3.8 billion years ago. Did it take 3 billion years for multicellularity to evolve? If so, how in the world could all of life have evolved in a mere 650 million years??? How can evolutionists honestly believe that such a thing took place?

    Again, maybe that is a mistake or maybe I’m misunderstanding something, but what they are claiming seems inconceivable!

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