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The page tells you the answer, as it is the first zone listed. Habitable zone is only a place that would allows liquid water to remain for a short period of time. So Habitable zone is only looking at temperature and then temperature for a short period of time. A lot more is needed for life and even more for a Habitable Zone for Complex Life (HZCL). There are references for each of the zones. Astronomers, cosmologists and astrobiologist have written about these zones listed. Just look at the Habitable zone page, there is nothing about the other zones as it is all about liquid water. [1]I plan to add example planets to the page, to help make it more clear. Thank you for asking. It was just yesterday, I thought about adding example planets that would help.
Telecine Guy (
talk)
19:43, 20 February 2024 (UTC)reply
There are 21 known Life habitable zones. Habitable zone is only one of them. There is a page for this one zone. This page is about the other 20 known zones.
Telecine Guy (
talk)
05:11, 21 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Before I post, would this be helpful to answer your question as to the difference between Life habitable zones and habitable zone. (I could add Venus also) (note:habitable zone is not about life and is singular)
Example planets and their Life habitable zones. (if a zone is not list there is not enough data):
Earth is in all known Life habitable zones with a stable star, the Sun.
Mars:
Stable star - Sun:
Just on the edge of the habitable zone (water)
In Optimistic habitable zone
Out of Continuously habitable zone
Out of Conservative habitable zone
In Ultraviolet habitable zone
At edge of Photosynthetic habitable zone
Out of Tropospheric habitable zone
In Planet rotation rate habitable zone
At edge of Planet rotation axis tilt habitable zone
Out of Astrosphere habitable zone
Out of Atmosphere electric field habitable zone
In Tidal habitable zone
Out of Carbon Dioxide habitable zone
In Orbital eccentricity habitable zone
Out of Coupled planet-moon - Magnetosphere habitable zone
"New Discovery Shows "Not All Habitable Zones Are Created Equal" (there is more than one)."Habitable Zone for Complex Life", "Complex life might require a very narrow habitable zone" These are both talking about Life habitable zones.
Telecine Guy (
talk)
05:25, 21 February 2024 (UTC)reply
My suggestion was something like renaming the article to, "List of habitable zone types." The trouble might be with capitalization of phrases not found in other sources.... The article appears to be creating Names for Things out of descriptions of those things. Encyclopedias don't do that much. (
— 𝐬𝐝𝐒𝐝𝐬 — - talk)
08:49, 21 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Having a lot of references does not make it not a list. This definitely seems like
WP:SYNTH to me. I checked a random sampling of the article bullet points, and many of your references do not use the term in the bullet. -
Parejkoj (
talk)
18:16, 22 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Actually I take back my suggestion "Alternative habitable zones". The 'zones' organization will limit the scope of the article: source may nor not discuss habitability in terms of zones.
IMO the scientific interesting, notable topic here is "constraints on habitability", not "zones". That is why the article ran into trouble after the exhausting the documented zones.
Johnjbarton (
talk)
02:14, 28 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Some of the "zones" here are described as such by the refs. But some are not.
To give an example, the article claims:
"Carbon Dioxide habitable zone is the place the planets will have the correct levels of carbon dioxide."
No reference in that section refers to planets or zones. (It also seems incorrect to me, but that does not matter). The section should be deleted.
Johnjbarton (
talk)
19:12, 27 February 2024 (UTC)reply
I deleted the section. However, the issue of carbon dioxide is discussed in
Schwieterman, Edward W., et al. "A limited habitable zone for complex life." The Astrophysical Journal 878.1 (2019): 19.
This example shows why trying to shoe-horn the references into a "zone" list is not encyclopedic. Wikipedia is a summary of existing knowledge, not a mechanism for imposing structure.
Johnjbarton (
talk)
19:24, 27 February 2024 (UTC)reply
I agree with previous comments that there are issues here with
WP:SYNTH and
WP:OR. In particular: does the term "Life Habitable Zone" appear at all in research literature or other sources? Or is this a term that was just made up for the title of this article? If this term doesn't have established notability then it should not be used in WP and certainly not for the title of an article. I'd agree with prior suggestions to change this article into a list of habitable zone types, which would be a better way to frame the content that's contained here.
Aldebarium (
talk)
01:27, 28 February 2024 (UTC)reply
The List concept has the problem that not all of the discussions of additional constraints on habitability are framed as "zones". To me that is the core problem here. The "additional constraints on habitability" concept is notable and well referenced here, but forcing everything into "zones" is not supported by the refs.
Johnjbarton (
talk)
02:08, 28 February 2024 (UTC)reply
OK, I understand your point. Perhaps reframing this as an article about (or as a list of) constraints on habitability could work. A change in title is still needed too.
Aldebarium (
talk)
02:36, 28 February 2024 (UTC)reply
If you wish can change name to Habitable Zone for Complex Life (HZCL), as these are the parameters needed for life.
I suggest that an article named Habitable zone for complex life should start from the point of view in the corresponding article that introduced that name. A section on zones which are actually named as such by references would be fine, say under "Named zones"; a different section on "Other habitability limits" could have content that does not have specific zones named. (I'll repeat that the zones thing is not that important compared to the considerations of the limitations). This approach avoids the SYNTH issues with zone names.
Johnjbarton (
talk)
22:08, 29 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Proposal to move to Habitable zone for complex life
The Talk page has many discussions on the reasons to rename the article. It looks like there may be consensus to move to "Habitable zone for complex life". We may still decide to organize or merge the article but this much seems like a start.
Move - Changing the article title is necessary although I’m not convinced that HZCL is the right title either. It seems like the overall theme of the article is constraints or issues affecting habitability, which is a little different from HZCL. But HZCL is an improvement over the current title. The article will still need a lot of editing and modification as previously discussed.
Aldebarium (
talk)
16:32, 1 March 2024 (UTC)reply
I broke the list "Named habitable zones", "Named habitable zones for complex life", and "Other orbital-distance related factors". Items on the middle section that do not have verifiable references matching the name given should be moved to the third section. I moved the "Milankovitch cycle" because I did not find a ref naming a zone "Milankovitch cycle zone". The remainder need to be verified and maybe moved.
Describing a zone as a 'range of distances from a star' may be questionable. It doesn't seem to cover some cases. Binary systems. (Maybe even singleton stars with polar features different from equatorial features?) Even the existence of other planets in the system might alter a habitable zone e.g. if the other planet were radioactive. What about describing a zone as a 'region of space around a star'? (
— 𝐬𝐝𝐒𝐝𝐬 — - talk)
04:25, 7 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Similarly the current 'requires a very narrow zone' might be better phrased as 'requires a tightly constrained zone,' or something similar. (
— 𝐬𝐝𝐒𝐝𝐬 — - talk)
04:30, 7 March 2024 (UTC)reply
I think the additional complexity in the definition is not needed because the exceptional cases would never be considered. Maybe "range of distances from a normal star" or similar? IMO "region of space" is far too vague.
“the annulus around a star where a rocky planet with a CO2-H2O-N2 atmosphere and sufficiently large water content (such as on Earth) can host liquid water on its solid surface.”
I see your point. Some readers might benefit from an early link to
planetary system (which seems to be implied in the current lede of this article). E.g: 'In a
planetary system a Habitable Zone for Complex Life (HZCL) is ....' Or is that self-evident for the intended readers? (
— 𝐬𝐝𝐒𝐝𝐬 — - talk)
22:55, 7 March 2024 (UTC)reply
The NASA Ref.
NASA clearly talks about the Carbon dioxide habitable zone and Carbon monoxide habitable zone. It even has a chart of these two zone. Ref "Schwieterman, Edward W., et al. "A limited habitable zone for complex life." The Astrophysical Journal 878.1 (2019): 19." also is ref for these two. So why is this deleted?
Telecine Guy (
talk)
02:31, 13 May 2024 (UTC)reply
boldly removing CO and CO2 "zones", since atmospheric composition does not correlate with orbital distance, and no search results in journal articles feature these names
Thanks for the ping. Indeed, I removed the article text because I couldn't find these terms anywhere, although the sources do describe how CO and CO2 levels are problematic in certain regions within the habitable zone. The article text, as written, was also somewhat vague. I'm now reading that there is an indirect correlation, for instance due to planets near the outer edge of the classical habitable zone requiring toxic amounts of CO2 to provide the necessary greenhouse effect, which was not at all obvious from the text I removed. If there's a better name for this "zone" or "correlation" used throughout the scientific literature, perhaps it can have a standalone bullet point, but if not, I think it's better rewritten in the list item (broadly) dedicated to the complex life habitable zone, since it seems to be more so a part of that than a "habitable zone" in its own right. Complex/Rational00:13, 14 May 2024 (UTC)reply
I should add that the graphic looks hand-drawn in MS paint and not extracted directly from the journal article, so is not necessarily accurate and therefore is inappropriate for use here. However, the article is available under a CC-BY 3.0 license, and thus its graphics are suitable for uploading (unless explicitly labeled under a non-free license). Complex/Rational00:17, 14 May 2024 (UTC)reply
Carbon Dioxide habitable and Carbon Monoxide habitable zone
Carbon dioxide habitable zone: the place the planets will have the correct levels of
carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is essential for life, though only within a narrow range of concentrations. Life forms use carbon dioxide to regulate respiration and control blood pH. Plants use carbon dioxide to create
oxygen through
photosynthesis. High carbon dioxide levels causes
hypercapnia.[1][2]
Carbon monoxide habitable zone: the zone in which planets have low levels of
carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is a poisonous, colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas. Carbon monoxide is little less dense than air.[3][4] A planet that has life given atmosphere, cannot have star any dimmer than the Sun, as this would have deadly levels of carbon monoxide. On Earth, carbon monoxide does not accumulate as the Sun has the correct parameters to destroy carbon monoxide in the atmosphere.[5]Carbon stars are at the extreme side of deadly carbon monoxide levels.[6][7][8]
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Spaceflight, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
spaceflight on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SpaceflightWikipedia:WikiProject SpaceflightTemplate:WikiProject Spaceflightspaceflight articles
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Habitable zone for complex life is part of the WikiProject Biology, an effort to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to
biology on Wikipedia. Leave messages on the WikiProject
talk page.BiologyWikipedia:WikiProject BiologyTemplate:WikiProject BiologyBiology articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Weather, which collaborates on weather and related subjects on Wikipedia. To participate, help improve this article or visit the
project page for details.
The page tells you the answer, as it is the first zone listed. Habitable zone is only a place that would allows liquid water to remain for a short period of time. So Habitable zone is only looking at temperature and then temperature for a short period of time. A lot more is needed for life and even more for a Habitable Zone for Complex Life (HZCL). There are references for each of the zones. Astronomers, cosmologists and astrobiologist have written about these zones listed. Just look at the Habitable zone page, there is nothing about the other zones as it is all about liquid water. [1]I plan to add example planets to the page, to help make it more clear. Thank you for asking. It was just yesterday, I thought about adding example planets that would help.
Telecine Guy (
talk)
19:43, 20 February 2024 (UTC)reply
There are 21 known Life habitable zones. Habitable zone is only one of them. There is a page for this one zone. This page is about the other 20 known zones.
Telecine Guy (
talk)
05:11, 21 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Before I post, would this be helpful to answer your question as to the difference between Life habitable zones and habitable zone. (I could add Venus also) (note:habitable zone is not about life and is singular)
Example planets and their Life habitable zones. (if a zone is not list there is not enough data):
Earth is in all known Life habitable zones with a stable star, the Sun.
Mars:
Stable star - Sun:
Just on the edge of the habitable zone (water)
In Optimistic habitable zone
Out of Continuously habitable zone
Out of Conservative habitable zone
In Ultraviolet habitable zone
At edge of Photosynthetic habitable zone
Out of Tropospheric habitable zone
In Planet rotation rate habitable zone
At edge of Planet rotation axis tilt habitable zone
Out of Astrosphere habitable zone
Out of Atmosphere electric field habitable zone
In Tidal habitable zone
Out of Carbon Dioxide habitable zone
In Orbital eccentricity habitable zone
Out of Coupled planet-moon - Magnetosphere habitable zone
"New Discovery Shows "Not All Habitable Zones Are Created Equal" (there is more than one)."Habitable Zone for Complex Life", "Complex life might require a very narrow habitable zone" These are both talking about Life habitable zones.
Telecine Guy (
talk)
05:25, 21 February 2024 (UTC)reply
My suggestion was something like renaming the article to, "List of habitable zone types." The trouble might be with capitalization of phrases not found in other sources.... The article appears to be creating Names for Things out of descriptions of those things. Encyclopedias don't do that much. (
— 𝐬𝐝𝐒𝐝𝐬 — - talk)
08:49, 21 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Having a lot of references does not make it not a list. This definitely seems like
WP:SYNTH to me. I checked a random sampling of the article bullet points, and many of your references do not use the term in the bullet. -
Parejkoj (
talk)
18:16, 22 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Actually I take back my suggestion "Alternative habitable zones". The 'zones' organization will limit the scope of the article: source may nor not discuss habitability in terms of zones.
IMO the scientific interesting, notable topic here is "constraints on habitability", not "zones". That is why the article ran into trouble after the exhausting the documented zones.
Johnjbarton (
talk)
02:14, 28 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Some of the "zones" here are described as such by the refs. But some are not.
To give an example, the article claims:
"Carbon Dioxide habitable zone is the place the planets will have the correct levels of carbon dioxide."
No reference in that section refers to planets or zones. (It also seems incorrect to me, but that does not matter). The section should be deleted.
Johnjbarton (
talk)
19:12, 27 February 2024 (UTC)reply
I deleted the section. However, the issue of carbon dioxide is discussed in
Schwieterman, Edward W., et al. "A limited habitable zone for complex life." The Astrophysical Journal 878.1 (2019): 19.
This example shows why trying to shoe-horn the references into a "zone" list is not encyclopedic. Wikipedia is a summary of existing knowledge, not a mechanism for imposing structure.
Johnjbarton (
talk)
19:24, 27 February 2024 (UTC)reply
I agree with previous comments that there are issues here with
WP:SYNTH and
WP:OR. In particular: does the term "Life Habitable Zone" appear at all in research literature or other sources? Or is this a term that was just made up for the title of this article? If this term doesn't have established notability then it should not be used in WP and certainly not for the title of an article. I'd agree with prior suggestions to change this article into a list of habitable zone types, which would be a better way to frame the content that's contained here.
Aldebarium (
talk)
01:27, 28 February 2024 (UTC)reply
The List concept has the problem that not all of the discussions of additional constraints on habitability are framed as "zones". To me that is the core problem here. The "additional constraints on habitability" concept is notable and well referenced here, but forcing everything into "zones" is not supported by the refs.
Johnjbarton (
talk)
02:08, 28 February 2024 (UTC)reply
OK, I understand your point. Perhaps reframing this as an article about (or as a list of) constraints on habitability could work. A change in title is still needed too.
Aldebarium (
talk)
02:36, 28 February 2024 (UTC)reply
If you wish can change name to Habitable Zone for Complex Life (HZCL), as these are the parameters needed for life.
I suggest that an article named Habitable zone for complex life should start from the point of view in the corresponding article that introduced that name. A section on zones which are actually named as such by references would be fine, say under "Named zones"; a different section on "Other habitability limits" could have content that does not have specific zones named. (I'll repeat that the zones thing is not that important compared to the considerations of the limitations). This approach avoids the SYNTH issues with zone names.
Johnjbarton (
talk)
22:08, 29 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Proposal to move to Habitable zone for complex life
The Talk page has many discussions on the reasons to rename the article. It looks like there may be consensus to move to "Habitable zone for complex life". We may still decide to organize or merge the article but this much seems like a start.
Move - Changing the article title is necessary although I’m not convinced that HZCL is the right title either. It seems like the overall theme of the article is constraints or issues affecting habitability, which is a little different from HZCL. But HZCL is an improvement over the current title. The article will still need a lot of editing and modification as previously discussed.
Aldebarium (
talk)
16:32, 1 March 2024 (UTC)reply
I broke the list "Named habitable zones", "Named habitable zones for complex life", and "Other orbital-distance related factors". Items on the middle section that do not have verifiable references matching the name given should be moved to the third section. I moved the "Milankovitch cycle" because I did not find a ref naming a zone "Milankovitch cycle zone". The remainder need to be verified and maybe moved.
Describing a zone as a 'range of distances from a star' may be questionable. It doesn't seem to cover some cases. Binary systems. (Maybe even singleton stars with polar features different from equatorial features?) Even the existence of other planets in the system might alter a habitable zone e.g. if the other planet were radioactive. What about describing a zone as a 'region of space around a star'? (
— 𝐬𝐝𝐒𝐝𝐬 — - talk)
04:25, 7 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Similarly the current 'requires a very narrow zone' might be better phrased as 'requires a tightly constrained zone,' or something similar. (
— 𝐬𝐝𝐒𝐝𝐬 — - talk)
04:30, 7 March 2024 (UTC)reply
I think the additional complexity in the definition is not needed because the exceptional cases would never be considered. Maybe "range of distances from a normal star" or similar? IMO "region of space" is far too vague.
“the annulus around a star where a rocky planet with a CO2-H2O-N2 atmosphere and sufficiently large water content (such as on Earth) can host liquid water on its solid surface.”
I see your point. Some readers might benefit from an early link to
planetary system (which seems to be implied in the current lede of this article). E.g: 'In a
planetary system a Habitable Zone for Complex Life (HZCL) is ....' Or is that self-evident for the intended readers? (
— 𝐬𝐝𝐒𝐝𝐬 — - talk)
22:55, 7 March 2024 (UTC)reply
The NASA Ref.
NASA clearly talks about the Carbon dioxide habitable zone and Carbon monoxide habitable zone. It even has a chart of these two zone. Ref "Schwieterman, Edward W., et al. "A limited habitable zone for complex life." The Astrophysical Journal 878.1 (2019): 19." also is ref for these two. So why is this deleted?
Telecine Guy (
talk)
02:31, 13 May 2024 (UTC)reply
boldly removing CO and CO2 "zones", since atmospheric composition does not correlate with orbital distance, and no search results in journal articles feature these names
Thanks for the ping. Indeed, I removed the article text because I couldn't find these terms anywhere, although the sources do describe how CO and CO2 levels are problematic in certain regions within the habitable zone. The article text, as written, was also somewhat vague. I'm now reading that there is an indirect correlation, for instance due to planets near the outer edge of the classical habitable zone requiring toxic amounts of CO2 to provide the necessary greenhouse effect, which was not at all obvious from the text I removed. If there's a better name for this "zone" or "correlation" used throughout the scientific literature, perhaps it can have a standalone bullet point, but if not, I think it's better rewritten in the list item (broadly) dedicated to the complex life habitable zone, since it seems to be more so a part of that than a "habitable zone" in its own right. Complex/Rational00:13, 14 May 2024 (UTC)reply
I should add that the graphic looks hand-drawn in MS paint and not extracted directly from the journal article, so is not necessarily accurate and therefore is inappropriate for use here. However, the article is available under a CC-BY 3.0 license, and thus its graphics are suitable for uploading (unless explicitly labeled under a non-free license). Complex/Rational00:17, 14 May 2024 (UTC)reply
Carbon Dioxide habitable and Carbon Monoxide habitable zone
Carbon dioxide habitable zone: the place the planets will have the correct levels of
carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is essential for life, though only within a narrow range of concentrations. Life forms use carbon dioxide to regulate respiration and control blood pH. Plants use carbon dioxide to create
oxygen through
photosynthesis. High carbon dioxide levels causes
hypercapnia.[1][2]
Carbon monoxide habitable zone: the zone in which planets have low levels of
carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is a poisonous, colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas. Carbon monoxide is little less dense than air.[3][4] A planet that has life given atmosphere, cannot have star any dimmer than the Sun, as this would have deadly levels of carbon monoxide. On Earth, carbon monoxide does not accumulate as the Sun has the correct parameters to destroy carbon monoxide in the atmosphere.[5]Carbon stars are at the extreme side of deadly carbon monoxide levels.[6][7][8]