Talk:Planetary habitability

I've just chopped an unsourced section, but there is quite a lot of uncited text elsewhere, making the article non-compliant with Wikipedia:Featured article criteria. Wikipedia:Featured article review is currently working through featured articles that have not been reviewed in the last 8 years and this article is listed near the top. DrKay (talk) 13:49, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

I wonder if it is appropriate to include a brief section on some of the space missions (Viking, Phoenix, Curiosity, ExoMars, 2020 Mars rover), that had an emphasis in habitability assessment. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 23:35, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

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The "habitable zone" is defined as water habitable zone, looks to be the only determinate for the habitability of a planet here. But, new measurements show there are other habitable zones. Planetary habitability for life must simultaneously reside in all of the 9 known habitable zones: water, ultraviolet, photosynthetic, ozone, rotation rate, obliquity, tidal, atmosphere, and atmospheric electric field.

• this would need a source. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:30, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

• Naturally: Maybe should be a new page Habitability zones? As there is lot of info on this topic.Telecine Guy (talk) 02:48, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

[http://www.washington.edu/news/2009/06/10/new-definition-could-further-limit-habitable-zones-around-distant-suns/ washington.edu, New definition could further limit habitable zones around distant suns, by Vince Stricherz, June 10, 2009]

[https://www.univie.ac.at/physikwiki/images/5/5c/Habitable_Zone.pdf Universität Wien, Habitable Zone, Isabella Kraus, January 18, 2012]

[http://www.as.utexas.edu/astronomy/education/spring02/scalo/kasting.pdf Texas U. Habitable Zones around Main Sequence Stars, by DP Whitmire - ‎1993]

[http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast141/Unit5/Lect34_StarHZ.pdf Ohio State, Habitable Zones around Stars, by Prof. Richard Pogge, 2012]

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1003.1222 Cornell University , Habitable Zones and UV Habitable Zones around Host Stars, by Jianpo Guo, Fenghui Zhang, Xianfei Zhang, Zhanwen Han, on 5 March 2010]

[http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009AGUFM.B11E..03S Harvard, Tectonics and the photosynthetic habitable zone, by Sleep, N. H., Dec. of 2009]

[http://www.space.com/8798-find-aliens-follow-photosynthesis.html space.com, How to Find Aliens: Follow the Photosynthesis, By Charles Q. Choi, July 22, 2010]

[http://staff.washington.edu/eschwiet/essays/photosynthesis_AB501.pdf Washington U., The Feasibility of Photosynthesis on Extrasolar Planets, By Edward Schwieterman]

[http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2004IAUS..213..309S Harvard, Photosynthetic Constraints on the Habitable Zone, By Storrie-Lombardi, M. C., Tsapin, A. I., McDonald, G. D., Coleman, M. L., & Meadows, V. S. Bioastronomy 2002: Life Among the Stars, Proceedings of IAU Symposium #213. Edited by R. Norris, and F. Stootman. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2003., p.309, 2001]

[http://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/could-alien-life-cope-with-a-hotter-brighter-star/ Astrobiology Magazine Contributor, Could Alien Life Cope with a Hotter, Brighter Star? By Adam Hadhazy, March 20, 2014]

[http://www.space.com/13088-habitable-planets-stars-galaxy-center.html How to Astrobiology Magazine, Find Habitable Planets in Our Galaxy's Danger Zone, By Gemma Lavender September 27, 2011]

[http://www.iafe.uba.ar/u/pablo/Papers/Buccino_et_al_2006.pdf Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ultraviolet radiation constraints around the circumstellar habitable zones, by Andrea P. Buccino, Guillermo A. Lemarchand, Pablo J.D. Mauas. 9 December 2005]

[http://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/rotation-planets-influences-habitability/ Astrobiology Mag., Rotation of Planets Influences Habitability, By Amanda Doyle, Aug. 7, 2014]

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.3686.pdf Effects of Extreme Obliquity Variations on the Habitability of Exoplanets, by J. C. Armstrong, Department of Physics, Weber State University & R. Barnes, University of Washington & S. Domagal-Goldman, NASA Goddard & J. Breiner, T. R. Quinn, and V. S. Meadows, University of Washington]

[http://www.astrobio.net/topic/deep-space/alien-life/tidal-habitable-zone/ astrobio.net, Tidal Habitable Zone, Jun 17, 2009]

[http://faculty.washington.edu/rkb9/publications/bjgrh10.pdf University of Washington, Tidal Constraints on Planetary Habitability, R. Barnes,1,2 B. Jackson,3 R. Greenberg,4 S. N. Raymond,2,5 and R., Heller6, 1Department of Astronomy, University of Washington, 2Virtual Planetary Lab, 3NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow, Planetary Systems Laboratory, Goddard Space Flight Center, 4Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, 5Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, University of Colorado, 6Hamburger Sternwarte, University of Hamburg,]

[http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2010ASPC..430..133B Harvard, Tidal Limits to planetary habitability, R. Barnes 2009]

[https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/07/15/surface-composition-determines-temperature-and-therefore-habitability-of-a-planet/ Surface composition determines temperature and therefore habitability of a planet, by Anthony Watts, July 15, 2016]

[http://sci.esa.int/venus-express/57968-collinson-et-al-2016/ "The Electric Wind of Venus: A Global and Persistent 'Polar Wind'-Like Ambipolar Electric Field Sufficient for the Direct Escape of Heavy Ionospheric Ions: Venus Has Potential," Geophysical Research Letters, by Glyn Collinson. June 2016]

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL065084/abstract "Electric Mars: The First Direct Measurement of an Upper Limit for the Martian 'Polar Wind' Electric Potential," Geophysical Research Letters 42, by Glyn Collinson, November 2015]

• Zones move over time. [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224775571_The_faint_young_Sun_problem Reviews of Geophysics, The faint young Sun problem, by Georg Feulner, Feb 11, 2014]

[http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2014/0701-the-habitable-zone-of-inhabited-planets.html planetary.org, The Habitable Zone of Inhabited Planets, by Jaime Green, July 7, 2014]

[http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/~aditya/pubs/ChopraLineweaver2016.pdf ASTROBIOLOGY, Volume 16, Number 1, 2016, The Case for a Gaian Bottleneck: The Biology of Habitability, by Aditya Chopra and Charles H. Lineweaver]

I understand that specialists in a narrow field love to submerge in their own slang, but I think one role of the encyclopedia is to open the field to the public by translating the slang to a generally understandable language. To an average user it would be obvious that planet that is uninhabitable is unsuitable for colonization from the outside. That's the dictionary meaning of the word: a house is not habitable - you can travel there, but cannot live there. Reading this article, it implies that a planet that is not "habitable" (in the scientific slang sense) can be perfectly suitable for settlers. (Example? A huge star offers 100 thousand years stability, insufficient for "habitable", very much sufficient for colonization.) Is it possible to find a reliable source for an explanation that would clear this up? I volunteer to write the explanation, but I cannot find any source. --Kubanczyk (talk) 12:12, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

:♠While I'd take issue with "slang" ("jargon", perhaps, if that wasn't a bit pejorative for my liking), let me try & explain as I understand it. "Habitable" is "can be lived on without special equipment" (pressure suit, diving gear); "colonizable" (if that's a word...) includes planet (such as Mars) where either or both would be needed.

:♠In the scientific community, the usage is a bit different still: they tend to mean "suitable for the evolution & current existence of a life form like us" (which is a desperately anthropocentric kind of bias...). TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 20:13, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

::Habitability ONLY refers to the innert physical and chemical environment. Therefore it is possible to find a habitable planet that is sterile and uninhabited. 98.100.145.6 (talk) 20:28, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

:::"Habitability has been defined as the potential of an environment (past or present) to support life of any kind." [https://nai.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2016/04/NASA_Astrobiology_Strategy_2015_FINAL_041216.pdf NASA ASTROBIOLOGY STRATEGY 2015]

:::BatteryIncluded (talk) 18:48, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Is a sterile planet at all likely to have a human-breathable atmosphere? If not, habitability cannot include the scenario of a sterile planet that we could colonize. Dysamoria (talk) 16:42, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

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Planetary Characteristics: Orbit & Rotation: The two articles cited for a possible prior habitability of Mercury refer to a source paper that does not seem to mention life or habitability. Did I miss the relevant content behind a paywall? Dysamoria (talk) 16:45, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

:One is a newspaper report and the other says "Metastable and potentially habitable conditions might have developed episodically or transiently within these crustal materials". This does not support the comment in the article so I will delete. Dudley Miles (talk) 17:14, 14 December 2021 (UTC)