You recently read that a new possibly habitable planet was discovered. The planet, Burt, receives 1700 W/m2 from it’s companion star. If planet Burt has a a radius of 6500 km and acts like a blackbody ( emissivity =1 ) and thus radiates same amount of energy it absorbs, what is its average suraface temperature. For comparison the earth has a surface temperaure of 278 K.

1 answer

I guess we assume the temp is uniform over the surface as is the incoming power (obviously untrue)

5.67*10^-8 T^4 = 1700

T^4 = 300 * 10^8

T = 4.16 * 10^2 = 416 K

416 - 273 = 143 C

Hotter than boiling water. Habitable?