Journal
ASTRONOMICAL JOURNAL
Volume 157, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
IOP Publishing Ltd
DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/aaf420
Keywords
astrobiology; extraterrestrial intelligence; planets and satellites: physical evolution; planets and satellites: surfaces
Categories
Funding
- Breakthrough Prize Foundation
- Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) at Harvard University
Ask authors/readers for more resources
One of the unique features associated with the Earth is that the fraction of its surface covered by land is comparable to that spanned by its oceans and other water bodies. Here, we investigate how extraterrestrial biospheres depend on the ratio of the surficial land and water fractions. We find that worlds that are overwhelmingly dominated by landmasses or oceans are likely to have sparse biospheres. Our analysis suggests that major evolutionary events such as the build-up of O-2 in the atmosphere and the emergence of technological intelligence might be relatively feasible only on a small subset of worlds with surface water fractions ranging approximately between 30% and 90%. We also discuss how our predictions can be evaluated by future observations and the implications for the prevalence of microbial and technological species in the universe.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available