Talk:Planet 4546B/@comment-34563140-20180202222341

The trivia section about 4546b's sun and it's habitable zone is pretty redundant...For credentials; I'm studying astronomy, and i'm about to give you all a lecture in the science behind THE GOLDILOCKS ZONE.

First off, we don't know the slightest thing about the star 4546 is, so we CAN'T be sure how close 4546b is to it... IF you make the assumption that 4546 is similar to the sun, then we find, by measuring its size in the sky, that it's too close to properly support life, but that assumption doesn't hold true at all... 4546 may just as well be a much smaller star - not a red dwarf, because its light clearly has enough intensity of blue wavelength to make the sky and bright blue.

Second, a stars luminosity is only partially related to its size. Smaller stars can still get very hot, and therefore very luminous... even if the star would be the same size as the sun, it might be less luminous, and therefore have a closer goldilocks zone...

third, the goldilocks zone isn't all black and white, it changes based on planet characteristics: we know very little of the atmosphere of 4546b... We know it's mostly nitrogen and oxygen, as is earth, but we don't know the completely composition, we don't know whether it has any upper atmosphere activity, such as an ozone layer, etc. Therefore we don't know of any atmospheric mechanisms that would help the planet in sticking closer to the star than the traditional goldilocks zone calculations based on earth-like planets allow. For all we know, 4546b has a tick layer of ionized gas in its upper atmoshpere that absorbs most harmful radiation...The planet DOES have a magnetic field, because clearly a compass works, so charged particles from its sun would get deflected, which would help in being closer to a star.

Let's not make assumptions about the star's goldilocks zone by 1 planet of which we know too little to conclude such things...