UEA: Oceans moderate the climate
Story submitted by Eric Worrall
h/t The Register – University of East Anglia researchers have challenged the view that any planet in the Goldilocks zone (the right distance from a star so water is likely to be liquid) is likely to be habitable.
New research shows that without an ocean, and the right rate of rotation, a planet is likely to experience extremes of temperature which make it unlikely to harbour life.
From the Abstract; http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ast.2014.1171
“The climate and, hence, potential habitability of a planet crucially depends on how its atmospheric and ocean circulation transports heat from warmer to cooler regions. However, previous studies of planetary climate have concentrated on modeling the dynamics of atmospheres, while dramatically simplifying the treatment of oceans, which neglects or misrepresents the effect of the ocean in the total heat transport. Even the majority of studies with a dynamic ocean have used a simple so-called aquaplanet that has no continental barriers, which is a configuration that dramatically changes the ocean dynamics.
Here, the significance of the response of poleward ocean heat transport to planetary rotation period is shown with a simple meridional barrier—the simplest representation of any continental configuration. The poleward ocean heat transport increases significantly as the planetary rotation period is increased. The peak heat transport more than doubles when the rotation period is increased by a factor of ten. There are also significant changes to ocean temperature at depth, with implications for the carbon cycle. There is strong agreement between the model results and a scale analysis of the governing equations. This result highlights the importance of both planetary rotation period and the ocean circulation when considering planetary habitability.”
According to Dr. David Stevens, from UEA school of mathematics;
“Mars for example is in the sun’s habitable zone, but it has no oceans – causing air temperatures to swing over a range of 100°C. Oceans help to make a planet’s climate more stable, so factoring them into climate models is vital for knowing whether the planet could develop and sustain life,”
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
*bows to Kate Forney’s superior editing*
This is great news.
All the inhabited planets in my unpublished blockbuster science fiction novel have oceans.
Is that
confirmation biasprescience or what?In fact, there are many more requirements for a habitable planet. Things like rotation, tilt, volcanic activity, water vapor, mineral and chemical balance, oxygen and many more. Think of the odds of all the needed components required for a habitable planet.
So much for Arrakis.
“anticommie says:
In fact, there are many more requirements for a habitable planet. Things like rotation, tilt, volcanic activity, water vapor, mineral and chemical balance, oxygen and many more. Think of the odds of all the needed components required for a habitable planet.”
Warning, the website at the bottom of this post has a Christian bent, but it’s a science site, and it talks about the anthropic principle, i.e., that the universe appears “designed” for the sake of human life – seems to be a relevant matter of discussion on this topic.
If you just want the main scientific meat (sorry vegetarians) and don’t want to click on a link with a religious bent , two paragraphs from the link are as follows:
“…In 1961, astronomers acknowledged just two characteristics of the universe as “fine-tuned” to make physical life possible.1 The more obvious one was the ratio of the gravitational force constant to the electromagnetic force constant. It cannot differ from its value by any more than one part in 10(40th power) (one part in ten thousand trillion trillion trillion) without eliminating the possibility for life. Today, the number of known cosmic characteristics recognized as fine-tuned for life—any conceivable kind of physical life—stands at thirty-eight.2 Of these, the most sensitive is the space energy density (the self-stretching property of the universe). Its value cannot vary by more than one part in 10(120th power) and still allow for the kinds of stars and planets physical life requires.3
Evidence of specific preparation for human existence shows up in the characteristics of the solar system, as well. In the early 1960s astronomers could identify just a few solar system characteristics that required fine-tuning for human life to be possible. By the end of 2001, astronomers had identified more than 150 finely-tuned characteristics.4 In the 1960s the odds that any given planet in the universe would possess the necessary conditions to support intelligent physical life were shown to be less than one in ten thousand.5 In 2001 those odds shrank to less than one in a number so large it might as well be infinity (10(173th power)).
More at the link, if you feel inclined. If you are into the whole science/religion debate, Dr. Hugh Ross is a great resource .
http://www.reasons.org/articles/anthropic-principle-a-precise-plan-for-humanity
If there was/is a “plan” for human existence it was/is the most roundabout, inefficient, awkward, happenstance plan in the history of the universe.
The anthropic principle proves nothing. It’s essentially a tautology: Any observable universe must by definition be capable of producing an observer.
Eustace Cranch on July 22, 2014 at 9:09 am
If there was/is a “plan” for human existence it was/is the most roundabout, inefficient, awkward,
happenstance plan in the history of the universe.
——————
This is about the most logically rediculous line of thinking i can imagine. But, you are in good company as Dr. S has made similar claims. The amount of hubristic assumption that goes into this line of thinking makes my soul shudder. Please enlighten us to a superior plan for the existence of man.
Hey, Joseph, thanks for the support, but it’s all good. Anthony has a fantastic site here (Thanks again Anthony!) that allows ideas to be freely exchanged. People here are very intelligent, let them read all the input and decide for themselves.
@FergalR at 12:25 am
Has anyone considered searching for signs of intelligent life at the University of East Anglia?
+1
The book, Rare Earth (Ward 2000) was there long before UEA.
Indeed, Ward et al made the case that a large Moon and Plate Tectonics are two of ten essential factors for the development of intelligent life. The Moon stabilizes the axis of the planet, without which the axis could at times be inclined over 45 degrees, guaranteeing huge permanent ice caps. Plate Tectonics is what keeps the planet from being 100% ocean covered. Without Plate Tectonics, erosion would eliminate all dry land except for volcanos that temporarily make it above water.
If I recall correctly, Mars has little or no magnetic field and lacks a corresponding Van Allen radiation belt. On earth, the Van Allen radiation belt helps preserve the atmosphere from destruction by the solar wind.
If I recall correctly.
Let me be clear (channeling Barack), I am pointing out the ridiculousness of speculating about and then argueing on this subject, not on whether there is or is not a plan. We don’t know is the only reasonable answer. We don’t know if there is a plan, we don’t know what makes a good plan, we don’t know what it means to have or not have a plan.
“We don’t know if there is a plan, we don’t know what makes a good plan, we don’t know what it means to have or not have a plan.”
Did not know this was morphing into a USA politics discussion. Agree that this does describe the current Administration.
Frodo says (July 22, 2014 at 8:38 am): “…and it talks about the anthropic principle, i.e., that the universe appears “designed” for the sake of human life…”
FYI, ants refer to it as “the formic principle”. 🙂
I find it hard to believe that the universe was “designed” for human life, because so much of it is hostile to organic life (and tries to wipe us out by chucking kinetic impactors at us). Personally, I think we’re only here to invent the cybernetic life form(s) that will replace us and inhabit much more cosmic real estate than we ever could. 🙂
David L says:
July 22, 2014 at 1:00 am
This all presumes that life can only exist as it does on earth. Life adapts to it’s environment. Who’s to say the extent of life’s adaptability? Here on earth we find life at all extremes, from steaming pools of water, to deep ocean hydrothermal vents, to freezing arctic conditions.
On earth, the extremophile metabolism has only arisen among single-celled microbes, at volcanic sites such as hydrothermal vents. These organisms can derive energy from sources other than oxygen, such as iron or sulfur etc. If hypothetically, a multicellular extremophile were to evolve, it would need a blood system to transport a suitable reducible chemical energy source such as sulphuric acid … o wait
There are about 2^80 stars in the visible universe. Some think that producing a life form which knows how to split the atom is a doddle compared with throwing 80 heads in a row. Others think that it might require rather more stars than chance evolution has at its disposal. While there are those who eagerly await our first conversations with alien intelligences, there are those who do not, simply because there are NOT ENOUGH STARS, as Enrico Fermi realised.
No flipping gigantic moon, no ocean currents (probably no ocean at all), no magnetic field, no stable axial tilt, so no life.
“cartoonmick says:
July 22, 2014 at 1:54 am
…Our climate has always varied within acceptable ranges, …”
This despite the fact that the sun was only about 70% as luminous as it is now when we started out 4.6 billion years ago. Be thankful those liquid oceans and the strong NEGATIVE feedback they provide against temperature change.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0442(2001)014%3C2976%3APBOTES%3E2.0.CO%3B2
–rogerthesurf says:
July 22, 2014 at 12:56 am
Cant have water without atmospheric pressure which presumably is related to the gravity/mass of the planet.
I think I learnt that in high school. Anyone disagree?–
A ocean of water could make an atmosphere of H20 gas.
I would guess that having gases other then H20 would lessen the disassociation of H20
from sunlight- such a process would take a long time in regards losing the atmosphere.
Or if one had average global ocean depth of 1000 meter on the planet Mercury, one should have a H20 atmosphere for millions of years.
So Mercury has very slow rotation, no axis tilt, has very intense solar flux, and has no atmosphere.
If added a 1000 meter deep ocean, what happens?
Regardless of intense sunlight the lack of atmosphere would immediately cause the water to vaporize and remaining water to freeze in direct sunlight. So dump a lot of water on surface and it’s fairly explosive. But after billions of tons of water has evaporated it would form a very thin atmosphere. [Mars is about same size, and very thin atmosphere and about 25 trillion tons [which is equal to 2500 cubic km of water. Mercury surface area is 75 million square kilometers and 1 km depth that totals 75,000 trillion tonnes]. Anyways once billions of tons of water evaporated and froze the surface water, the vapor pressure and the cold H20 would make it less explosive or significantly reduce the rate it evaporates.
Once one has vaporized 1 meter depth as far as global average, the atmosphere’s mass is 1/10th of Earth {Earth atmospheric mass if 10 tons per square meter]. The gravity of Mercury- 1/3rd of Earth, one make pressure 3/100th of earth’s pressure, But roughly equal Earth’s water vapor partial pressure [or exceeding Earth’s average partial vapor pressure]. And in terms of mass and pressure this is about 3 times Mars.
So with this 75 trillion tons of atmosphere, one would have water evaporating in similar fashion as it does on Earth, but the low pressure would cause water to have much lower boiling point as compared to Earth. So in sunlight the ice would melt to become liquid and as wild guess boiling point of the water might around 50 C. And one would have weather. Clouds would form, and one would get rain. And in poles and night side one get snow and ice formation. And much wind would be happening.
And one would be at few months from point in time where one dumped 75,000 trillion tonnes
or water on Mercury’s surface. Or it seems to me that the surface of Mercury lacks thermal energy
to be able to vaporize 1 meter on average depth of water, but given time- years and centuries the sunlight would gain enough thermal energy so as to vaporize more than 1 meter average depth
mike18xx says:
July 22, 2014 at 2:43 am
//////////////////
Are you sure?
I accept that there is a strong argument that a moon may be required, but you have to bear in mind that our relationship with our moon has varied dramatically these past 4.5 billion years, it use to be significantly closer, and this resulted in a day lasting about 4 hours (not 24 hours). the day has got longer as the moon has receded.
The majority of planets in our solar systems have moons, so moons are not at all rare. Obviously the more planetary moons there may be, more complexity is thrown into the mix, but I do not readily see why we one would need a moon just like ours to act as a steadying influence on the planet.
But even if the statistics for a planet with a moon is vanishingly small, just by force of numbers that would suggest that there are still plenty of ‘Earth’ like planets theoretically possible.
The fact that we still today consider that there are realistic possibilities of life having existed on Mars when it had water and an atmosphere, and that life may exist on Titan, if not now, then in the future as the sun begins to expand, suggests that the possibilites are larger than you seem to suggest..
Since we do not know how life started on Earth, we do not really know what is necesary for life to seed (if that is the right expression), and hence what to look for. This is further complicated since life may take a completely different form on a different planet, and may not even be carbon based (although carbon would appear to be a near essential factor).
Of course, we do not know what the odds of multicellular is. What we know is that it took about 3 billion years for this to evolve such that multicellular life on planet Earth has been in existence for only a short period of time. The great step in life was not the move out of the oceans, but rather the step from singular to multicellular organisms.
Since it took so long for the multicellular step, it may be that this step is extremely difficult. It might even mean that habitable conditions need to endure for billions of years. that may also narrow down the field.
Whilst it is all conjecture, I would be surprised if there was no life in the universe other than here on planet Earth. Multi-cellular, well that is a different ball game and as for intelligent life, the odds of that do not appear to be that great, but since we do not know how life is triggered, nor what prompted it to evolve from single to multicellular form, we really do not know what is required. . .
There is no Goldilocks zone.
Life happened on earth because it could. And it happened in several places with completely different “environments.”
Ergo, life may happen wherever it can.
So far as WE know, it is like the big bang; and has only happened once. Well on one planet.
Richard Varney writes
Exactly. This is the crucial step that happened on earth and the breakthrough was the evolution of photosynthesis, initially by cyanbacteria and later plants. This introduced oxygen into the atmosphere for the first time. Multi-cell life is either plants or animals. All animals from ants to fish to people need oxygen. All food on earth is produced by the carbon fixation enzyme Rubisco .
The complex biochemical process behind photosynthesis was evolved by cyanbacteria from two previous “anoxygenic” processes in iron or sulfur environments. The cyanbacteria revolution was important because now the only environment needed was water, air and sunlight so they rapidly spread all around the world, and especially across all the oceans. Suddenly oxygen was being generated by photosynthesis whose imprint is clearly seen in the geological record beginning with the Great Oxidation about 2.3 billion years ago. However the long term build up of oxygen in the atmosphere is a very subtle effect, that is still not fully understood. Essentially 99.5% of emitted oxygen is consequently reabsorbed, but its relationship to CO2 levels is particularly interesting. Some interesting facts about photosynthesis that need to be explained are the following.
1. Current levels of photosynthesis on earth would deplete all CO2 in the atmosphere in just 9 years.
2. Photosynthesis in the Oceans depletes all available phosphorous needed by aquatic plants and algae in just 86 years.
3. Most of the CO2 absorbed by plants is soon liberated to the atmosphere when they die or are eaten by animals, while only a tiny amount of carbon is buried in sediments. Even by including this recycling effect we still find CO2 depletion of the atmosphere takes a mere 13,000 years while phosphorous depletion takes only 29,000 years. So what are we doing wrong?
The incredible story of life on earth is that these trapped sediments are not lost from the environment for ever because plate tectonics recycles material over very long timescales today. Subduction, mountain building and sea level change continuously re-exposes the raw materials for life through weathering. Plate tectonics is essential to re-cycle the raw materials for life on earth !
“richard verney says:
Since we do not know how life started on Earth, we do not really know what is necessary for life to seed (if that is the right expression), and hence what to look for. “
You ain’t kiddin. I don’t want to antagonize the mods more than I have already, so I’ll leave off the link, but the following paragraphs comprise a small portion of an article from site I linked to in an earlier post:
“…New evidence indicates that life in its minimal form is chemically complex even if morphologically simple. The smallest bacterial genomes capable of independent survival include between 1500-1900 gene products.47-50 These bacteria are believed to be the oldest organisms on Earth and quite likely reflect the complexity of first life on Earth and the minimum complexity of independent life.51 The smallest known genome, that of Mycoplasma genitalium, is comprised of 470 gene products.52 However, M. genitalium is not an appropriate model for the origin of life, for it depends on host biochemistry to survive and, therefore, cannot exist independently. Nonetheless, M. genitalium is a good model for determining the bare minimum requirements for life. Theoretical and experimental work using M. genitalium indicate that life requires at least 250-350 gene products (having eliminated, in theory, genes used for parasitic interactions).53-55
Biophysicist Hubert Yockey has calculated the probability of forming a single gene product (one that is functionally equivalent to the ubiquitous protein cyctochrome C) as one chance in 10(75th power). 56 Given this probability, Yockey calculated that if the hypothetical primordial soup contained about 10(44) amino acids, a hundred billion trillion years would yield a 95% chance for random formation of a functional protein only 110 amino acids in length (a single gene product).57 The universe is about 15 billion years old. This means that less than one trillionth of the time has passed that would be needed to make even one of the 250-350 gene products necessary for minimal life, or one of the 1500 gene products necessary for independent life.
Further complicating the supra-astronomical probabilities that must be overcome for even the simplest life to arise by natural processes is the changing view of bacteria. No longer regarded as cells with a random, nondescript internal structure, bacteria are now recognized as having remarkable internal organization, both spatially and temporally, at the protein level.58, 59 This internal organization of bacterial cells is universal and is needed for their survival. This means that origin-of-life researchers must account for not only the simultaneous appearance of 250-350 gene products but also their organization inside the cell….”
That’s a lot of random chance, folks. And the above is just a part that talks about the complexity of even the simplest life; not about the conditions of the early earth, which was basically hostile, not at all conducive, to the formation of any of these substances, . Only God knows how all this came about (sorry I couldn’t help myself 🙂 ).
My guess is that, 100+ years from now, the consensus in the scientific world will be that aliens seeded “simple” life on the early Earth, and we eventually evolved from that
cartoonmick says:
July 22, 2014 at 1:54 am
archonix says:
July 22, 2014 at 2:24 am
Oh we’re “flat earthers” again? Very nice. Very tolerant of opposing viewpoints there, mick. Did you spend all night thinking that one up?
=============
You’re right “archonix”, there was a bit of a “sledgehammer” in my posting here. My apologies. Shall try to be careful in the future.
Cheers
Mick
Frodo says (July 22, 2014 at 4:57 pm): ‘My guess is that, 100+ years from now, the consensus in the scientific world will be that aliens seeded “simple” life on the early Earth, and we eventually evolved from that’
So it’s
turtlesaliens all the way down? 🙂http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/08/models-all-the-way-down/
The temperature swing is 0 C to -100 C. It would be worse if it’s 0 C to 100 C. Mars has bigger problems than temperature swing. Virtually no atmosphere. The composition of the atmosphere is irrelevant because there are so few gas molecules in it. No magnetic field to shield against cosmic rays and solar storms. These ionizing radiations are lethal. No water which is essential to life as we know it. Good luck to those planning to colonize Mars. No wonder others call it science fiction.