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The Goldilocks Planets - Not Too Hot or Cold!: Space Math

The document discusses factors that determine whether a planet can support liquid water, and provides data on 54 planets discovered by NASA's Kepler Observatory. It notes that planets must be within a star's habitable zone, which depends on the star's temperature and the planet's distance from the star, in order to potentially support liquid water. The data table provides each planet's orbit period, distance from its star, radius, temperature, and the star's temperature. Several problems are presented analyzing trends in the planet data to determine which types of planets are more commonly found in different parts of the habitable zone.

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57 views3 pages

The Goldilocks Planets - Not Too Hot or Cold!: Space Math

The document discusses factors that determine whether a planet can support liquid water, and provides data on 54 planets discovered by NASA's Kepler Observatory. It notes that planets must be within a star's habitable zone, which depends on the star's temperature and the planet's distance from the star, in order to potentially support liquid water. The data table provides each planet's orbit period, distance from its star, radius, temperature, and the star's temperature. Several problems are presented analyzing trends in the planet data to determine which types of planets are more commonly found in different parts of the habitable zone.

Uploaded by

pianomagician
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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The Goldilocks Planets - Not too hot or cold!

Once you have discovered a planet, you need to figure out whether liquid water
might be present. In our solar system, Mercury and Venus are so close to the sun that
water cannot remain in liquid form. It vaporizes! For planets beyond Mars, the sun is so
far away that water will turn to ice. Only in what astronomers call the Habitable Zone
(shown in green in the figure above) will a planet have a chance for being at the right
temperature for liquid water to exist in large quantities (oceans) on its surface!
The Table on the following page lists the 54 planets that were discovered by
NASA's Kepler Observatory in 2010. These planets come in many sizes as you can see
by their radii. The planet radii are given in terms of the Earth, where '1.0' means a planet
has a radius of exactly 1 Earth radius (1.0 Re) or 6,378 kilometers. The distance to each
planet's star is given in multiples of our Earth-Sun distance, called an Astronomical Unit,
so that '1.0 AU' means exactly 150 million kilometers.
Problem 1 - For a planet discovered in its Habitable Zone, and to the nearest whole
number, what percentage of planets are less than 4 times the radius of Earth?
Problem 2 - About what is the average temperature of the planets for which R <4.0 Re?
Problem 3 - About what is the average temperature of the planets for which R >4.0 Re?
Problem 4 - Create two histograms of the number of planets in each distance zone
between 0.1 and 1.0 AU using bins that are 0.1 AU wide. Histogram-1: for the planets
with R > 4.0 Re. Histogram-2 for planets with R < 4.0 Re. Can you tell whether the
smaller planets favor different parts of the Habitable Zone than the larger planets?
Problem 5 - If you were searching for Earth-like planets in our Milky Way galaxy, which
contains 40 billion stars like the ones studies in the Kepler survey, how many do you
think you might find in our Milky Way that are at about the same distance as Earth from
its star, about the same size as Earth, and about the same temperature (270 - 290 K) if
157,453 stars were searched for the Kepler survey?

Space Math

http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

66

66

Answer Key

Problem 1 - For a planet discovered in its Habitable Zone, and to the nearest whole number, what
percentage of planets are less than 4 times the radius of Earth? Answer: There are 28 planets for which
R < 4.0 re, so P = 100% x (28/54) = 52%
Problem 2 - About what is the average temperature of the planets for which R <4.0 Re? Answer;
Students will identify the 28 planets in the table that have R < 4.0, and then average the planet's
temperatures in Column 6. Answer: 317 K.
Problem 3 - About what is the average temperature of the planets for which R >4.0 Re? Students will
identify the 26 planets in the table that have R > 4.0, and then average the planet's temperatures in
Column 6. Answer: 306 K.
Problem 4 - Create two histograms of the number of planets in each distance zone between 0.1 and
1.0 AU using bins that are 0.1 AU wide. Histogram-1: for the planets with R > 4.0 Re. Histogram-2 for
planets with R < 4.0 Re. Can you tell whether the smaller planets favor different parts of the Habitable
Zone than the larger planets? Answer; They tend to be found slightly closer to their stars, which is why
in Problem 2 their average temperatures were slightly hotter than the larger planets.
R < 4.0 Re

R > 4.0

6
Number of Planets

Number of Planets

5
5

2
2
1

0
0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

Distance (AU)

0.7

0.8

0.9

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

Distance (AU)

Problem 5 - If you were searching for Earth-like planets in our Milky Way galaxy, which contains 40
billion stars like the ones studies in the Kepler survey, how many do you think you might find in our Milky
Way that are at about the same distance as Earth from its star, about the same size as Earth, and about
the same temperature (270 - 290 K) if 157,453 stars were searched for the Kepler survey?
Answer: Students may come up with a number of different strategies and estimates. For example, they
might create Venn Diagrams for the data in the table that meet the criteria given in the problem. Then,
from the number of planets in the intersection, find their proportion in the full sample of 54 planets, then
multiply this by the ratio of 40 billion to 157,453. Estimates near 1 million are in the right range.

Space Math

http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

66
Table of Habitable Zone Candidates

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54

Space Math

Planet
Name
(KOI)

Orbit
Period
(days)

Distance
To Star
(AU)

Planet
Radius
(Re)

Planet
Temp.
(K)

Star
Temp.
(K)

683.01
1582.01
1026.01
1503.01
1099.01
854.01
433.02
1486.01
701.03
351.01
902.01
211.01
1423.01
1429.01
1361.01
87.01
139.01
268.01
1472.01
536.01
806.01
1375.01
812.03
865.01
351.02
51.01
1596.02
416.02
622.01
555.02
1574.01
326.01
70.03
1261.01
1527.01
1328.01
564.02
1478.01
1355.01
372.01
711.03
448.02
415.01
947.01
174.01
401.02
1564.01
157.05
365.01
374.01
952.03
817.01
847.01
1159.01

278
186
94
150
162
56
328
255
122
332
84
372
124
206
60
290
225
110
85
162
143
321
46
119
210
10
105
88
155
86
115
9
78
133
193
81
128
76
52
126
125
44
167
29
56
160
53
118
82
173
23
24
81
65

0.84
0.63
0.33
0.54
0.57
0.22
0.94
0.80
0.45
0.97
0.32
1.05
0.47
0.69
0.24
0.88
0.74
0.41
0.37
0.59
0.53
0.96
0.21
0.47
0.71
0.06
0.42
0.38
0.57
0.38
0.47
0.05
0.35
0.52
0.67
0.36
0.51
0.35
0.27
0.50
0.49
0.21
0.61
0.15
0.27
0.59
0.28
0.48
0.37
0.63
0.12
0.13
0.37
0.30

4.1
4.4
1.8
2.7
3.7
1.9
13.4
8.4
1.7
8.5
5.7
9.6
4.3
4.2
2.2
2.4
5.7
1.8
3.6
3.0
9.0
17.9
2.1
5.9
6.0
4.8
3.4
2.8
9.3
2.3
5.8
0.9
2.0
6.3
4.8
4.8
5.0
3.7
2.8
8.4
2.6
3.8
7.7
2.7
2.5
6.6
3.1
3.2
2.3
3.3
2.4
2.1
5.1
5.3

239
240
242
242
244
248
249
256
262
266
270
273
274
276
279
282
288
295
295
296
296
300
301
306
309
314
316
317
327
331
331
332
333
335
337
338
340
341
342
344
345
346
352
353
355
357
360
361
363
365
365
370
372
372

5,624
5,384
3,802
5,356
5,665
3,743
5,237
5,688
4,869
6,103
4,312
6,072
5,288
5,595
4,050
5,606
5,921
4,808
5,455
5,614
5,206
6,169
4,097
5,560
6,103
3,240
4,656
5,083
5171
5,218
5,537
3,240
5,342
5,760
5,470
5,425
5,686
5,441
5,529
5,638
5,488
4,264
5,823
3,829
4,654
5,264
5,709
5,675
5,389
5,829
3,911
3,905
5,469
4,886

http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov

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