There's also a number
of interesting applications in the evolution
of Earth's atmosphere that branch off from the runaway greenhouse physics, for example how fast a magma - ocean covered early Earth ends up cooling — you can't lose heat to space
of more than about 310 W / m2 or so for an Earth -
sized planet with an efficient
water vapor feedback, so it takes much longer for an atmosphere - cloaked Earth to cool off from impact events than a body just radiating at sigmaT ^ 4.