It's intriguing to think about planetary systems this way, and if 'going interplanetary' is something that life does when the option arises, it could be an important addition to our search for evidence of life elsewhere. [7/7]

And there are zones that involve the availability of space-farer resources, like asteroids. We can already chart that to some extent for our solar system, and it will only matter more and more...[6/n]

Other new zones include 'ease of transport', related to the gravitational landscape of a planetary system and the efficiency of spacecraft transfer orbits or low energy pathways. This matters for interplanetary life...[5/n]

Then there is a simple zone (an inverse square law) for capturing energy from solar electromagnetic radiation . Perhaps modified by the thermal effects of being too close to the star on materials used to capture energy...[4/n]

What about life that moves beyond its point of origin though? That's where all the other zones start to matter. There're zones related to particle radiation risk - broadly higher risk closer to the star + farther where a star's heliosphere protects less against cosmic radiation...[3/n]

Underlaying this 'map' are the classical habitable zones: the circumstellar HZ and the regions where icy worlds (like icy moons) can exist and potentially harbor interior oceans. But these zones are really all about ID'ing places where life might originate and be sustained...[2/n]

(Admittedly I haven't really been away)