Goldilocks Planet

Looking for another habitable planet outside of Earth has drawn the attention of scientists for years. Initially scientists believed that as long as a planet orbits a star in a habitable zone that the could be a potential planet for humans to colonize on. However, over the years that list has gotten more extensive. So, distance matters. So does an active molten core with volcanism, plate tectonics, a magnetic field, it can’t be too close or too far from a gas giant (a gas giant can either cause asteroids to hit the planet, but can also prevent it as well), circular orbit (so conditions on the planet are consistent throughout the revolution), not too fast or slow of a rotation rate. These are just some of the necessary conditions for making a planet habitable. These conditions also don’t include the factors that make a star system habitable, which makes it a longer list, such as it can’t be too close to a supernovae or other cosmic explosions.

                  There have been a few planets that have met a lot of the qualifications for a habitable planet, however, scientists have differing factors about what makes a planet habitable, so there is no consensus whether there are any planets that are currently potentially habitable. We must keep looking throughout the Milky Way to see if we can find the ‘goldilocks’ planet.

An extrasolar planet example