Why being in the ‘right place’ isn’t enough for life

A planet’s habitability is determined by a confluence of many factors. So far, our explorations of potentially habitable worlds beyond our solar system have focused exclusively on their position in the “Goldilocks Zone” of their solar system, where their temperature determines whether or not liquid water can exist on their surface, and, more recently, what their atmospheres are composed of. That’s in part due to the technical limitations of the instruments available to us—even the powerful James Webb Space Telescope is capable only of seeing the atmospheres of very large planets nearby.

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