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    Life may be easier to find on planets outside the ‘habitable zone’

    by 
    Swapna Krishna
    Swapna Krishna
    12.04.2017

    When scientists are looking for worlds that might harbor life on other planets, they tend to look for worlds that have features similar to Earth's. It makes sense; after all, our dominant theories on how life evolved on the planet center on the presence of oxygen, organic molecules and liquid water. But now, two scientists are positing that we may be severely limiting ourselves by only looking for rocky planets with surface oceans. A study published last week at arXiv.org outlines the possibility that it's more likely that scientists will find life on icy worlds with subsurface oceans.