Searching for life in the Universe is one of NASA's most important research activities. To find out how big, researchers are going deeper, climbing higher, and looking in the nooks and crannies of our own planet. The Goldilocks Zone is bigger than we thought. Whole ecosystems have been discovered around deep sea vents where sunlight never reaches and the emerging vent-water is hot enough to melt lead. Scientists found microbes in nuclear reactors, microbes that love acid, and microbes that swim in boiling-hot water. In the past 30 years, our knowledge of life in extreme environments has exploded. Image right: A false-color electron micrograph image of Tindallia californiensis. All life known in those days was confined to certain limits: no colder than Antarctica (penguins), no hotter than scalding water (desert lizards), no higher than the clouds (eagles), no lower than a few mines (deep mine microbes). The Goldilocks Zone seemed a remarkably small region of space which didn't even include the whole Earth. Researchers of the 1970's scratched their heads and said we were in "the Goldilocks Zone."
Somehow, though, we ended up in just the right place with just the right ingredients for life to flourish. A little farther away, the Earth might be like cold arid Mars. If Earth, however, were a little closer to the sun, our planet might be like hot choking Venus. Our planet has liquid water, a breathable atmosphere, a suitable amount of sunshine.
Only Earth was just right for life, they thought. Mars and the outer planets were too cold. Scientists hunting for alien life can relate to Goldilocks.įor many years they looked around the solar system.
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