''Habitable'' planet close to a star
Imagine if you will a star comparable with our sun and a planet like earth orbiting at roughly the same distance around this star as our earth around the sun.
Would it be possible to place a planet somewhere between this ''earth analogue'' and the star/sun at such a distance as to get a planet comprised almost (if not) entirely of deserts and hot as all hell (compared to average earth temperatures,so anything above 48 degrees Celcius is fine) while still having liquid water (just not much of it and if needed not neccesarily above ground) and a breathable atmosphere.
ps. If such a world is possible could it still have plant life? (if need be subterranean in caves or something like that)
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1 answer
Models suggest that a desert planet (that is to say, a planet with some polar surface water, but otherwise dominated by land), can remain habitable as close as ~0.75 AU from a star with luminosity of 1 Sol (Abe et al. 2011). This is only a touch further out than Venus's orbit, which has a semi-major axis of 0.723 AU.
However, it is important to consider that main-sequence stars do grow hotter as they age, so if your planet began life near this inner boundary, it may not remain habitable as the star grows older and the habitable zone expands.
To establish where this boundary lies for other classes of star, apply the equation: $0.75 \sqrt{ L }$, where L is the star's luminosity.
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