A new study has indicated that planets with similar proportions of water and soil to those of Earth Land are very rare in Space. Estimates indicate that only 1% of the rocky worlds located in the habitable zones of the stars have these characteristics. In contrast, the survey found that around 80% of potentially habitable worlds are completely dominated by land and around 20% are purely oceanic worlds.
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To reach this conclusion, the researchers relied on models that measure the relationship between the recycling of water, mantle and continental soil by tectonic plates. In a statement released by the executive director of the International Institute of Space Sciences, Tilman Spohn, it is emphasized that the Earth presents a balance between terrestrial areas and the ocean. “It is tempting to assume that a second Earth would be like ours, but our modeling results suggest it isn’t,” the statement says.
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According to the research results, the ratio of land to sea on Earth is 1 to 3. However, on most planets, these numbers are different. According to the authors, the Earth reached these equilibrium conditions about 2.5 billion years ago. However, they claim that even today small rates of change occur on Earth, making it somewhat unstable.
Spohn said that “in the Earth’s tectonic plate engine, internal heat drives geological activity, such as earthquakes, volcanoes and mountain construction, and causes continents to grow.” However, there is a “regulatory” process for this situation, since “soil erosion is part of a series of cycles that exchange water between the atmosphere and the interior,” the researcher points out.
Therefore, the numerical models that show the interaction of these terrestrial cycles highlight the uniqueness of a planet Earth present in all space. In addition to the two traditional aspects mentioned above, the production of carbon dioxide was also considered, which contributes to the formation of a compound responsible for controlling the climate of a planet in the long term.
The researchers saw that while land and ocean-dominated planets may still be habitable, their life forms and climate may be quite different. Ocean-dominated worlds with less than 10% land would likely be warm, with humid atmospheres and tropical climates, while earth-dominated worlds with less than 30% of their ocean-covered surface would be cooler and drier. On these earth-dominated planets, cold deserts spanned continental masses and vast glaciers and ice sheets would be common.
Other research, however, points out that the more land there is, the higher the average surface temperatures in general. These divergences show that no hypothesis can be completely ruled out.
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