[ExI] Gaian Bottleneck

[Brian Manning Delaney]

El 2016-02-01 a las 19:23, spike escribió:

> The tidelocked worlds would have a narrow Goldilocks ring with so much less
> of the simple lifeforms, it is easy to imagine it just stays right there at
> that stage until the local star uses up the last of its hydrogen and goes
> red supergiant.


Agreed -- easy to imagine. You'd written "never" (i.e., impossible not 
to imagine) before and I was wondering whether you were thinking there's 
an absolute minimum amount of real estate needed for the odds of complex 
life developing to be greater than zero (or not so close to zero that 
one can, even with gazillions of planets, pretty much rule out the poss. 
of life developing). It sounds like you maybe do partly believe that, 
which I think I get, but seems to me we simply adjust the odds of life 
developing by the ratio of the guestimated area of the ring to an entire 
planet's surface, no? It's likely a big adjustment but it wouldn't mean 
these planets have a zero chance of developing complex life, just 50, or 
100, or maybe 200 times less of a chance. And there seem to be LOTS of 
planets like this. And with a thick enough atmosphere, the band of 
habitability could end up being very wide indeed (with a huge 
circulation cell going all the way around the boundary between night and 
day, doing its best, one hopes somewhat gently, to even things out).

But there are other problems -- solar flares, etc.

- Brian