Most of the Solar System's Water Hides OUTSIDE the Zone

Most of the liquid water in our solar system isn't in the habitable zone at all. It's hidden in the dark.

The Goldilocks zone is supposed to be where water survives. But far beyond it, where sunlight is feeble and the Sun is just a bright star, entire oceans are sloshing under sheets of ice.

Take Europa at Jupiter and Enceladus at Saturn. Both are frozen solid outside, far past the habitable zone. Yet beneath their ice shells lie global oceans of salt water. Europa may hold more water than all of Earth's oceans combined. What keeps them liquid isn't the Sun. It's tides. As the moons are squeezed and stretched by their giant planets, friction heats them from within, and Enceladus sprays its ocean into space through cracks at its south pole.

So the best place to find alien life might not be a sunny planet in the zone. It could be a frozen moon in the cold and the dark, warmed from the inside.

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