Plate Tectonics and Planetary Evolution: Implications for Understanding Exoplanets

Abstract:

A primary purpose in our study of exoplanets is the search for life. In hypothesizing how we might detect life, we start by examining life on Earth; it is our only example. How do we understand the meaning of habitability when there is only one example? All clues seem significant: the common need for the existence of water, the range of temperatures over which life on Earth is found, and the chemical cycles that maintain the surface and near-surface of the Earth within that range.

A common assertion is that plate tectonics is necessary for the carbon cycle that keeps the Earth at habitable temperatures by sequestering carbon in limetone in oceans, and parceling it back into the atmosphere through volcanoes. This is an unproven hypothesis. There are other tectonic processes that cycle carbon into a planetary interior and back to the atmosphere; one possibility is small-scale convection that returns lithospheric material to the mantle and produces small-scale volcanism. Whether this process is sufficient to stabilize climate on one-plate planets or planets with sluggish convection remains to be demonstrated.

Before we can discuss the criticality of plate tectonics on other planets we need to understand its criticality on Earth, and its apparent lack on Venus. And before we can predict whether plate tectonics should exist on a given exoplanet, we need to understand why it exists on Earth, and apparently not on Venus, and we need to know more about that exoplanet than can currently be detected.

In this talk I will compare the predictions for exoplanetary conditions conducive to plate tectonics, walk through possible pathways in planetary evolution that lead to plate tectonics, and discuss whether any aspect of plate tectonics on an exoplanet is detectable from Earth. Predicting and hoping to detect plate tectonics on exoplanets is walking out a shaky limb; making cautious incremental advances in understanding terrestrial plate tectonics is critical before extending outside our solar system.