Are there planets that are better for life than Earth?

The next is an extract from our Misplaced in Area-Time e-newsletter. Every month, we hand over the keyboard to a physicist or two to inform you about fascinating concepts from their nook of the universe. You may join Misplaced in Area-Time at no cost here.

Over 300 years in the past, the German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz argued that ours was the perfect of all doable worlds. The phrase “world” comes from Previous English, initially that means Earth, and later extending to the bodily world in …