• Question: How much closer to the Sun would the Earth have to be for living here to be impossible?

    Asked by pinkelephants17 to Amy, Grant, Martin, Shawn, Usman on 13 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Grant Kennedy

      Grant Kennedy answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      That’s a really good question, and while we have a pretty good idea, we don’t know exactly since the Earth’s atmosphere is a very complicated system.

      We call the region you’re talking about the “habitable zone”, or sometimes the “Goldilocks zone”, since it’s not to hot, not too cold, and just right! The latest estimates are that the Earth would only need to be about 10% closer to the Sun before things got really bad, so the answer is not much!
      g

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