The habitable zone is defined as the area around a star where liquid water could be found, there is no "our" habitable zone and "their" habitable zone.
Parts of our own Earth aren't in the habitable zone, by that definition. Even here we get big surprises - undersea vents were unexpected oases, microbes miles deep underground, microbes living in boiling water in Yellowstone...
Not all life in the universe may require liquid water, nor require it 24/7. In our own solar system, some planetoids outside our supposed habitable zone likely have some liquid water - Europa and Enceladus, for example.
> Parts of our own Earth aren't in the habitable zone, by that definition.
What parts would that be? Even the polar caps have huge liquid water oceans underneath. Unless you’re talking about the mantle or molten core, there are no uninhabitable areas on earth as per astrobiology (not even miles underground).
> Not all life in the universe may require liquid water, nor require it 24/7.
You might as well be talking about leprechauns and unicorns and Horta. Water is the universal solvent and has at least five unique properties that are as critical to life as carbon’s ability to form four chemical bonds.
You’re correct that moons experiencing tidal heating can contain liquid water, but that’s irrelevant to a planet. The habitable zone is specifically talking about planets (rocky ones at that), not any arbitrary satellite. It’s a term of art in astronomy, not a colloquialism.
> Unless you’re talking about the mantle or molten core, there are no uninhabitable areas on earth as per astrobiology (not even miles underground).
We've found microbes that can survive at 120 Celsius, -25 Celsius, very high and very low pH, large amounts of ionizing radiation, intense pressures, etc. Habitability is a wide range encompasing scenarios not conducive to liquid water.
> Water is the universal solvent and has at least five unique properties that are as critical to life as carbon’s ability to form four chemical bonds.
None of that rules out life on other chemistries. It makes water+carbon-based life the most likely scenario on planets with liquid water, but hardly rules out other potential biologies.
> You’re correct that moons experiencing tidal heating can contain liquid water, but that’s irrelevant to a planet. The habitable zone is specifically talking about planets (rocky ones at that), not any arbitrary satellite.
But we should absolutely be looking at planet-sized moons with potentially habitable conditions, which we believe to be quite common. They are, after all, more common than the single "habitable zone" planet even within our own system.
Is the upshot of this observation supposed to be that PLATO should change its plans and direct its telescope in a different direction because it has more promising places to look than the habitable zones around stars?
If not, and if you can understand why it's prioritizing that, then why do you take this definition of habitability to be tantamount to denying the possibility of discovering other forms of life? For those possibilities to be relevant to a research program, they need to be motivated by something more than "gee, hey, you never know."
So it's not for lack of reflection on those possibilities that we arrive at this operative definition of habitability. There are pertinent reasons for moving forward with this definition that don't amount to denying other boutique possibilities. Construing it that way I think is just an uncharitable interpretation.
It’s not impossible, but we’ve got a ton of evidence why it’s extremely unlikely. It’s a long list including stuff like possible quantum transition states enabling biochemistry, reactivity with oxygen (the third most abundant element), and spectroscopic transparency. It’s an active area of research that keeps coming up with dead ends.
Ammonia and methane are the best candidates but those would only be possible at low temperatures that preclude lots of other reactions.
> The two examples you gave... Include liquid water.
This specific planet spends half its orbit in said zone. Here on Earth, we have creatures like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudskipper that can survive severe dry spells, and fish that can happily freeze sold in ice for months.
Europa spends zero time in our solar system's "habitable zone", but because of its conditions, may still possess large amounts of liquid water. It's a perfect example of why the "zone" may be overly narrowly defined, even for Earth-like water-dependent life.
> It is entirely possible there is some other form of life that does not require liquid water, but we have yet to discover it.
And we certainly won't if we only look in Earth-defined "habitable" zones.
You seem to be deliberately trying to pervert the definition of habitable zone.
Just because there are regions on a planet in the habitable zone that contains ice does not mean it is not in the habitable zone. If it were further out beyond the habitable zone, there would be no liquid water at the surface.
To quote my friend Andy Dufresne, "How can you be so obtuse?...Is it deliberate?"
> You seem to be deliberately trying to pervert the definition of habitable zone.
They're fine. Some people here are trying to overextend the definition and it's good to push back.
The habitable zone is about surface water. Pointing out that parts of the earth lack surface water for extended periods is a really good analogy to a planet that drifts in and out of the habitable zone.
Earth is the only environment in which we've found life, so it makes sense to first focus on other Earth-like planets. Your point is not without merit but taken to the extreme it would be like sending exploratory teams to the Mariana Trench to look for un-contacted human tribes.
We have incontrovertible evidence that water + carbon + time sometimes equals life. We have no evidence of any other non-carbon or non-water chemistries resulting in life so why wouldn't we focus on locations potentially rich in water and carbon first?
The first exoplanet detection was in 1992; in my lifetime, "there are no planets outside our solar system" was roughly as supportable as "there is no life outside our solar system" is today.
There's a meaningful operative definition and you're muddying the waters over that definition on the grounds that, hey, who knows, maybe it's different somewhere in some way.
I just think you're confused if you think that observing a specific definition of habitable zone is tantamount to a specific denial of that possibility.
I'm not confused by its definition, I just dislike the use of the term. It leads to significant confusion in laypeople - "they found a habitable planet!" is something I've heard breathlessly repeated multiple times, and "but Earth is so perfectly placed, it can't be by chance!" used as an argument for creationism.
Regardless of the official definition, the word “habitable” is highly subjective. Extremophiles like tardigrades can survive being frozen and/or completely dehydrated. A planet with an eccentric orbit like this one could hypothetically support species capable of entering some form of extreme hibernation during part of their year.
And that's fine, but when communicating outside the speciality, I'd really like to see some other term used.
https://www.cjonline.com/story/news/politics/government/2025... for example says "Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is now America's largest in recorded history", where "recorded history" is apparently the CDC's "term of art" for "since 1950", which isn't what a layperson hears.
The IAC is communicating outside the speciality here, via a press release.
That's why the article's breadcrumbs say "Home > Outreach > News".
We saw the same issue during COVID - scientists talking to the general public often talk like scientists instead of science communicators, and that causes people to misunderstand. Fauci's "no evidence" (yet) masking prevents disease incorrectly becomes evidence masking can't prevent disease.
While it's possible for conditions for life to emerge or sustain itself to be present beyond the habitable zone (e.g. there's likely a subsurface ocean orbiting the farthest plant from the Sun on Triton), afawk it is more probable that life forms in the habitable zone. That is the only one we have a data point for.
The terminology was probably chosen specifically to be somewhat clickbait, so it's probably not worth picking apart the words "habitable zone".
The core idea really boils (heh) down to water, _i.e._ the "universal solvent". You can certainly argue that liquid water may not be necessary for life, but it's hard to argue that water's presence isn't a decent prior for potential life.
But directly detecting liquid water in extrasolar planets is _hard_. So we do the next best thing and try to use whatever indirect signals we got. We know that liquid water can only exist within some range of temperatures and pressures. So let's just start with temperature.
What things can affect the surface temperature of a planet? Amount of energy received from the parent star (i.e. stellar irradiance), geothermal heating, tidal forces between a moon and planet, and probably many others. Stellar energy stands out as being the biggest contributor of energy and, fortunately, the easiest one to measure.
Of course, you could have localized sources of favorable conditions, like thermal vents or whatever, but those kinds of things are _way_ beyond our ability to detect with current tech.
So, we've narrowed down our focus to _one big contributing factor for potential life_, the amount of energy received from a planet's host star. But how can we relate energy to temperature? This is effectively where all the physics and astronomy come in via thermodynamics, orbital mechanics, and stellar physics.
Suffice it to say that all the effects combine to give a range of possible orbital radii and planet sizes where liquid water has a good chance of existing on the planteary surface.
This range of radii and planet sizes is the concept that matters. The name for this idea is "habitable zone", which suggests why we might care, compared to the more precise "orbital and planetary mass parameters favorable to liquid water formation at average planetary surface".
The habitable zone is defined as the area around a star where liquid water could be found, there is no "our" habitable zone and "their" habitable zone.