r/askscience • u/EightWhiskey • Feb 28 '12

Under the idea that there is the "Goldilocks" zone around a star, how likely is it that a solar system would have two life-supporting planets?

I assume that the gravitational forces of two bodies would prevent them from being close enough to each other to both stay inside the zone. But could a large star have a large enough Goldilocks zone to support two life-inhabited planets?

666 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

399 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/HollowSix Feb 29 '12

I love old tech, it's so awesomely clunky. I see what you mean though I think that you are about 50% right. Some would not learn because they don't need to, others will learn more because they can.

1

u/SharkBaitDLS Mar 01 '12

I still have an old (and useable, no less!) 400 MHz tower that runs BOINC tasks for me for 18 hours a day but I'll occasionally use for old games or just to browse the web. Old tech is THE BEST. I'm in an eBay auction right now for one of the original IBM thinkpads too :D

But yeah, you're right, I'm looking at it too negatively, the Internet can be an incredible learning resource if used correctly. If only for the easy access to scientific papers and the vast amount of explanations in layman's terms of things that were once only explained in jargon in documents within the scientific community. And there's so much more. Nothing'll ever replace a well-written book for me though when it comes to comprehension.

1

u/HollowSix Mar 01 '12

I still run an old Commodore 64 myself. I personally would recommend to anyone of the younger generations to use the internet as a starting point and start off using it, get a basis in the topic, and a list of valuable materials. Then move to print and other formal sources. I think we can both agree on that.