Solar Week - Ask a Question



Come here during Solar Week (next one: March 22-26, 2021) to interact. To post a question, click on your area of interest from the topics below, and then click on the "Ask New Question" button. Or EMAIL or tweet or plant in Answer Garden your question about the Sun or life as a scientist to us -- and watch for it to appear here.  You can also visit our FAQs (frequently asked questions). In between Solar Weeks in October and March, you can view all the archives here.

PrevPrev Go to previous topic
NextNext Go to next topic
Last Post 10/5/2006 2:10 PM by  Terry Kucera
sun
 1 Replies
Sort:
You are not authorized to post a reply.
Author Messages

Anonymous





Posts:


--
10/3/2006 6:45 AM
    crystal (dia) how close could earth get to the sun before it would be too hot for us to survive?

    Terry Kucera



    Basic Member


    Posts:328
    Basic Member


    --
    10/5/2006 2:10 PM
    Hi Crystal,
    This is actually a sort of complicated question, because the temperature of a planet depends on more than just its distance from the sun - it depends on its atmosphere too!

    For instance, Venus is closer to the Sun than the Earth and just based on distance it should be about twice as hot as Earth is. However, it is actually about 3 times hotter than Earth. That is because it has a thick atmosphere containing lots of carbon dioxide (CO2) which holds in the heat.

    Also, I am not quite sure how hot would be too hot... Hot enough to boil water would certainly be too hot, but I would guess the cut off, for humans anyway, would be lower than that.

    Although we don't expect Earth to be getting any closer to the sun, this is still an important question. Astronomers think about them when they consider the possibilities of life on their planets. How likely is it? How close or far could a planet be from its star (or stars) and still have life? We are not sure yet.

    Terry
    You are not authorized to post a reply.


    Twitter Feed

    Scientist Leaderboard

    Name # of replies
    Multiverse skin is based on Greytness by Adammer