# Just inside the Goldilocks Zone **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 24, 2012, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-inside-the-goldilocks-zone/638740 "2012-10-24T16:53:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2012, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-inside-the-goldilocks-zone/638740/21 "2012-10-24T23:55:16Z")
> [@Lasciel](#): > > I was (sloppily) referring to it more for the \*shape \*than for any other reason, as (at least to me when I first encountered the concept) a huge-ass raised band around a planetoid was a little hard to picture. Apologies for any resulting confusion. Do we actually _have_ any raised bands around the twilight zones of tidally-locked moons or asteroids, anywhere in our solar system? (If not, considering the number of tidally-locked beasts we DO have, I gotta wonder if such ridges would actually form.) ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2012, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-inside-the-goldilocks-zone/638740/22 "2012-10-25T00:01:02Z")
> [@tracer](#): > > Do we actually _have_ any raised bands around the twilight zones of tidally-locked moons or asteroids, anywhere in our solar system? (If not, considering the number of tidally-locked beasts we DO have, I gotta wonder if such ridges would actually form.) I dunno. Like I said, I got this from a book, and I can’t remember the details. I do remember there were lots of equations and math and complicated scientific explanations (see how much attention I paid!) for the various planetary oddities that were described. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2012, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-inside-the-goldilocks-zone/638740/23 "2012-10-25T00:03:58Z")
> [@Saltire](#): > > It came from a set of seminars Harlan Ellison was asked to give at UCLA in the '70s. He invited other writers to join in and they all, with the students, designed a world they could all base some stories in. Harlan Ellison invited other writers to join in? Does that mean it’ll never get published? \ ---
**Author:** ![Michael63129](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3da27b/32.png) [@Michael63129](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael63129)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2012, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-inside-the-goldilocks-zone/638740/24 "2012-10-25T00:13:01Z")
[Here](http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~tmerlis/coupled_tidally_locked.html)’s an interesting page that has animations from a climate model run for a tidally-locked Earth; temperatures on the night side only fall to 240 K while the day side reaches around 290K (interestingly enough, the current global average temperature is around 288 K - so a tidally-locked Earth is actually over 20 K cooler and below freezing, with the day side being similar to the current global average). Also, precipitation is virtually absent over the night side; in fact, there is net evaporation: > [@](#): > > The surface temperature changes rapidly over land masses to day-side values of about 290 K and to night-side values of about 240 K. The ocean surface temperature changes more slowly; the night-side ocean remains near the freezing point for the length of the simulation… > > …Precipitation patterns change rapidly (within a few months) from the zonally-elongated intertropical convergence zone that is typical of Earth today to a configuration in which there is substantial precipitation near the subsolar point and little precipitation on the night-side of the planet… > > …The net evaporation field (evaporation minus precipitation) shows that atmospheric water vapor is transported from the night side to the day side. While they don’t show wind patterns, I’m pretty sure with all of that heating and convection/rain on the day side, you will see a large amount of rising air, with surface winds blowing towards the day side (a similar pattern occurs on Earth from convectively-driven circulations, like the [Walker circulation](http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/elnino/img/walker2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/elnino/story.htm&h=306&w=604&sz=76&tbnid=g7a92r52rzYuLM:&tbnh=64&tbnw=127&zoom=1&usg=__zkasIZTmMkbZWjn_3DwmYJk_xoo=&docid=KCB3ytC3Yq_s8M&sa=X&ei=LoGIUIKDIKrS2AWVzoGgDw&ved=0CDIQ9QEwAw&dur=500) over the Pacific). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-inside-the-goldilocks-zone/638740.md?page=1)