Plate Tectonics and the Fermi Paradox
July 20, 2024 4:46 PM Subscribe
A recent paper on The Importance of Continents, Oceans, and Plate Tectonics for the Evolution of Complex Life (pdf) by Stern and Gerya, published in Nature, suggests that the rarity of planets with continents and plate tectonics might resolve the Fermi Paradox -- the problem of explaining why we haven't found intelligent, communicative, extraterrestrial life given that plausible models say such life should be abundant.
Marcia Bjornerud has a nice piece for a wider popular audience on Stern and Gerya's paper at the Nautilus.
Marcia Bjornerud has a nice piece for a wider popular audience on Stern and Gerya's paper at the Nautilus.
Nice! Reminds me a bit about how harsh environmental conditions were probably really important drivers of cooperative human societieS.
Now let's do the same sort of thing but with the moon.
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:00 PM on July 20
Now let's do the same sort of thing but with the moon.
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:00 PM on July 20
Scientific reports =/= Nature.
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 6:08 PM on July 20 [4 favorites]
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 6:08 PM on July 20 [4 favorites]
(unless fermi was just wrong--The Fermi Paradox May Have a Very Simple Explanation)
posted by mittens at 6:32 PM on July 20 [3 favorites]
posted by mittens at 6:32 PM on July 20 [3 favorites]
Now let's do the same sort of thing but with the moon.
There was a paper back in the 80s that suggested that tides were important in the formation of DNA and RNA strands. Specifically, the periodic wetting of clays allowed long carbon chains to form. The Chemist/Experimental Astrophysicist I worked for at the time thought that it had a point.
How's that?
posted by Spike Glee at 6:48 PM on July 20 [1 favorite]
There was a paper back in the 80s that suggested that tides were important in the formation of DNA and RNA strands. Specifically, the periodic wetting of clays allowed long carbon chains to form. The Chemist/Experimental Astrophysicist I worked for at the time thought that it had a point.
How's that?
posted by Spike Glee at 6:48 PM on July 20 [1 favorite]
Ironically (?), the Drake Equation is an example of a Fermi Estimate (not to be confused with his paradox), what the article calls out as a rough back of the napkin estimate. So adding precision terms from [insert your field of expertise here] is...is like adding fine filigree stitching to swatch of burlap. Sure you can, but it doesn't really improve the final product.
I can't speak to the science of the paper, but the approach doesn't inspire confidence.
posted by chromecow at 6:48 PM on July 20 [2 favorites]
I can't speak to the science of the paper, but the approach doesn't inspire confidence.
posted by chromecow at 6:48 PM on July 20 [2 favorites]
I feel like I should also add; the Drake Equation is purposefully vague, an acknowledgement that we think water is important for life, but beyond that...???
The addition of terms surrounding plate tectonics and such naturally make the end result smaller, but less useful, because all we know about life and plate tectonics is that it came together in one specific instance (Earth) in a vast universe, and here we have life.
Keeping it vague accounts for our vast ignorance of all the myriad ways life might come to occur in the universe, versus the N=1 example of how many exactly earth-like planets are there in the universe. It's possible you need an exactly earth like planet to get life, but that's just a wild-ass guess based on severely limited data.
You could just as easily say we can't rule out that there may be forms of life, unknown to us, that don't need water to evolve. Then you drop that term from the Drake Equation, and the number goes up. And it still more or less means...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by chromecow at 6:57 PM on July 20 [3 favorites]
The addition of terms surrounding plate tectonics and such naturally make the end result smaller, but less useful, because all we know about life and plate tectonics is that it came together in one specific instance (Earth) in a vast universe, and here we have life.
Keeping it vague accounts for our vast ignorance of all the myriad ways life might come to occur in the universe, versus the N=1 example of how many exactly earth-like planets are there in the universe. It's possible you need an exactly earth like planet to get life, but that's just a wild-ass guess based on severely limited data.
You could just as easily say we can't rule out that there may be forms of life, unknown to us, that don't need water to evolve. Then you drop that term from the Drake Equation, and the number goes up. And it still more or less means...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by chromecow at 6:57 PM on July 20 [3 favorites]
The discussion is of Space, above
I share below!Earth's Oceans Least...We forget.
posted by thomcatspike at 7:11 PM on July 20
I share below!Earth's Oceans Least...We forget.
posted by thomcatspike at 7:11 PM on July 20
Please tell me SciAm hasn't been busted out by private equity, because that article makes me think SciAm has been busted out by private equity.
posted by whuppy at 7:38 PM on July 20 [1 favorite]
posted by whuppy at 7:38 PM on July 20 [1 favorite]
Know all - I think Alien life exists..
All are looking up than down, take care!
posted by thomcatspike at 7:42 PM on July 20
All are looking up than down, take care!
posted by thomcatspike at 7:42 PM on July 20
This paper suggests it was the Theia collision which also formed the moon that kick-started plate tectonics. I would expect that an event of that magnitude to be quite rare.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:08 PM on July 20
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:08 PM on July 20
Just to make Orange Pamplemousse's point clearer, the FPP article is published in the journal Scientific Reports, not the journal Nature as the FPP states. Both journals are published by Nature Publishing Group (hence the nature.com domain for the link), but they're very different in terms of prestige and, at least in theory, rigor. Scientific Reports is an open-access journal where articles are reviewed only for methodological validity, not importance, significance, or external consistency. In contrast, Nature is one of the two most impactful general-topic scientific journals (the other being Science), and absolutely does review for these other factors when making editorial decisions. Basically, the bar for getting a paper accepted into Scientific Reports is not very high, while it's extremely high for Nature. This doesn't mean Scientific Reports is a bad journal, far from it: plenty of great work is published there. But seeing "published in Nature" implies very different things about a paper than "published in Scientific Reports" does.
This isn't a knock on this paper or an argument that the idea isn't sound, just pointing out that the level of vetting from peer review and editorial decisions is a lot lower than it would be if the journal actually were Nature. (Of course, top-tier journals like Nature are also prone to publishing flashy but ill-conceived work, and may even have higher rates of publishing fraudulent work. So the vetting one might assume of a paper published in Nature should still be taken with a healthy dose of salt )
posted by biogeo at 8:59 PM on July 20 [6 favorites]
This isn't a knock on this paper or an argument that the idea isn't sound, just pointing out that the level of vetting from peer review and editorial decisions is a lot lower than it would be if the journal actually were Nature. (Of course, top-tier journals like Nature are also prone to publishing flashy but ill-conceived work, and may even have higher rates of publishing fraudulent work. So the vetting one might assume of a paper published in Nature should still be taken with a healthy dose of salt )
posted by biogeo at 8:59 PM on July 20 [6 favorites]
> Please tell me SciAm hasn't been busted out by private equity
"The German publisher of Scientific American and Nature has agreed to form a joint venture with the private-equity backed Springer" [archive.nyt / dealb%k, 2015]
“bust out”?
[medium (cory doctorow):] "Private equity has grown from a finance sideshow to Wall Street’s apex predator, and it’s devouring the real economy through a string of (sic:) audactious bust outs"
silicate planetary bodies of the Solar System show two major types of tectonics: plate tectonics (PT, the global plate mosaic is present, modern Earth) and single lid (SL, the global mosaic is absent, Mars, Moon, Io, Venus, perhaps Archean-Hadean Earth)
OP ignores Jupiter's other moons? [nasa:] Europa may have interesting parallels with Earth's hydrothermal vents
Nautilus contextualizes well the mainstream consensus among geologists is that Earth had adopted its modern plate tectonic habits by at least 2.5 billion years ago—much earlier than Stern and Gerya contend.
"Some of the earliest evidence for microbial life on Earth comes from rocks located in Canada that formed within hydrothermal vent environments around 4 billion years ago" [natural history museum, uk]
posted by HearHere at 9:26 PM on July 20 [2 favorites]
"The German publisher of Scientific American and Nature has agreed to form a joint venture with the private-equity backed Springer" [archive.nyt / dealb%k, 2015]
“bust out”?
[medium (cory doctorow):] "Private equity has grown from a finance sideshow to Wall Street’s apex predator, and it’s devouring the real economy through a string of (sic:) audactious bust outs"
silicate planetary bodies of the Solar System show two major types of tectonics: plate tectonics (PT, the global plate mosaic is present, modern Earth) and single lid (SL, the global mosaic is absent, Mars, Moon, Io, Venus, perhaps Archean-Hadean Earth)
OP ignores Jupiter's other moons? [nasa:] Europa may have interesting parallels with Earth's hydrothermal vents
Nautilus contextualizes well the mainstream consensus among geologists is that Earth had adopted its modern plate tectonic habits by at least 2.5 billion years ago—much earlier than Stern and Gerya contend.
"Some of the earliest evidence for microbial life on Earth comes from rocks located in Canada that formed within hydrothermal vent environments around 4 billion years ago" [natural history museum, uk]
posted by HearHere at 9:26 PM on July 20 [2 favorites]
mittens: Free link for SciAm article.
Summary: Aliens have high tech for energy efficiency, which makes them harder to see.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 12:19 AM on July 21
Summary: Aliens have high tech for energy efficiency, which makes them harder to see.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 12:19 AM on July 21
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posted by thomcatspike at 5:32 PM on July 20 [3 favorites]