In order for a body to be active in space, it's got to be warm. Mars has just simply cooled off from its formation and so and smaller than Earth, it would cool faster. And so now it's got no action left. But then we go somewhere like Jupiter where we've got this push and pull of the gravitational energy. Those bodies can be active forever really because if they stay where they are and Jupiter keeps going around the sun and they're going to keep being active. So there's really no time limit on that.
Have we disproven the idea of a “goldilocks zone”? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Paul Mecurio learn about space geology, magnetic fields, volcanoes, and the origins of life with cosmochemist Natalie Starkey, PhD.
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Photo Credit: Boaworm, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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