Habitable zone much smaller than the hype-able zone?

From Hugh Ross, author of Improbable Planet, at the Reason to Believe:

For plants, animals, and advanced life to possibly exist, the liquid water and ultraviolet habitable zones must sustain their region of overlap for at least a few billion years. This longevity requirement creates a problem for all stars more massive than the Sun. Such stars burn up much faster than the Sun and their luminosities change much more radically than does the Sun’s. The faster and more dramatic burn-up histories of stars more massive than the Sun eliminates the planets orbiting such stars from possibly possessing plants, animals, or advanced life.

As noted earlier, for a planet to remain habitable it must avoid at least five different kinds of dangerous ultraviolet sources beyond its host star. As I describe in some detail in Improbable Planet, one of the more remarkable and very improbable features of our planet Earth is that it has indeed avoided sterilization from these sources.More.

But the hype-able zone is what gets the pop science media going and generates a budget, so… The main thing is, be the first on the block to know the facts.

See also: Astronomy text that privileges fine-tuning over flap doodle?

Follow UD News at Twitter!

Copyright © 2017 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana