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Interior and Surface Dynamics of Terrestrial Bodies and their Implications for the Habitability

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Habitability of Other Planets and Satellites

Part of the book series: Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology ((COLE,volume 28))

Abstract

For the Earth, it is speculated that plate tectonics plays an important role for its long-term habitability at the surface. This convection mechanism transports efficiently surface material by subduction into the planetary interior and allows life to grow and survive due to recycling of nutrients, the stabilization of the climate and the cooling of the deep interior. The latter further helps to maintain the magnetic field that protects the atmosphere from erosion and life from harmful radiation.

On icy moons in contrast, the habitable environment would be restricted to a possible subsurface ocean; a stabile atmosphere is not required. To sustain the subsurface ocean and gain energy for possible life, volcanic activity in the underlying silicate mantle but also tidal heating play an important role. The volcanic activity, however, may be also related to plate tectonics in the silicate mantle, but its existence is only speculative. In fact, plate tectonics on terrestrial bodies (i.e. a planet or moon with an iron core, a silicate mantle and a crust on top) is uncommon, and the Earth is the only planet that is known to operate in this convective regime. Other terrestrial bodies (e.g. Mars and Venus) operate today in the so-called stagnant lid regime where convection takes place underneath an upper stagnant layer – in their early evolution, however, plate tectonics may have been active. Alternatively, Venus may have experienced a convective resurfacing mechanism (as it has been proposed for the moon Enceladus) or a strong magmatic resurfacing (which is comparable to the resurfacing of the moon Io).

Even though planets and moons differ in many aspects, they show a lot of similarities. Understanding the diversity and the common features of terrestrial bodies (i.e. planets and moons) in the Solar System is a main challenge in geodynamics and astrophysics. One important question is to understand how plate tectonics and other resurfacing mechanisms work and why no (present-day) plate tectonics exists on any other terrestrial body in our Solar System but on Earth.

In this chapter we review some main characteristics of selected terrestrial bodies related to their (non-)habitability. In particular, we show how mantle convection simulations can give some answers to the question about the occurrence of plate tectonics. The extrapolations of plate tectonic studies to larger planets (like several exoplanets that have been detected in the past years) are, however, controversially discussed in the literature. Prognoses about plate tectonics on large terrestrial exoplanets strongly depend not only on the physics in the interior but also on the initial thermal state of the planets after accretion and differentiation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Reference Systems and Geodynamics, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Planetary Research, Rutherfordstr. 2, Berlin, 12489, Germany

    Lena Noack

  2. The Royal Observatory of Belgium, 3, Avenue Circulaire, Brussels, 1180, Belgium

    Doris Breuer

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  1. Lena Noack
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  2. Doris Breuer
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Correspondence to Lena Noack .

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  1. Experimental Planetary Physics, Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, Germany

    Jean-Pierre de Vera

  2. The Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Joseph Seckbach

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Noack, L., Breuer, D. (2013). Interior and Surface Dynamics of Terrestrial Bodies and their Implications for the Habitability. In: de Vera, JP., Seckbach, J. (eds) Habitability of Other Planets and Satellites. Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology, vol 28. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6546-7_12

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