How Much Does the Internal Structure of Terrestrial Planets Effect its Habitability?

Can the interior structure influence the habitability of a rocky planet?

Authors:

Noack et al

Abstract:

Motivation: The most likely places for finding life outside the Solar System are rocky planets, some of which may have surface conditions allowing for liquid water, one of the major prerequisites for life. Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), play an important role for the surface temperature and, thus, the habitability of an extrasolar planet. The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is in part determined by their outgassing from the interior.

Method: We use a two-dimensional convection model to calculate partial melting and the amount of CO2 outgassed for Earth-sized stagnant-lid planets. By varying the planetary mass, we investigate the evolution of a secondary atmosphere dependent on the interior structure (different ratio of planetary to core radius). We further study the likelihood for plate tectonics depend on the interior structure and investigate the influence of plate tectonics on outgassing.

Results: We find that for stagnant-lid planets the relative size of the iron core has a large impact on the production of partial melt because a variation in the interior structure changes the pressure gradient and thereby the melting temperature of silicate rocks with depth. As a consequence, for planets with a large core (a radius of at least 70%–75% of the planet's radius), outgassing from the interior is strongly reduced in comparision to a planet with the same radius but a small core. This finding suggests that the outer edge of the habitable zone of a star not only depends on the distance from the star and thus the solar influx but is further limited by small outgassing for stagnant-lid planets with a high average density, indicating a high iron content (e.g. Mercury and the recently detected exoplanets Kepler-10b and CoRoT-7b). This contradicts previous model that have assumed CO2 reservoirs being in principle unlimited for all planets. If plate tectonics is initiated, several tens of bars of CO2 can be outgassed in a short period of time – even for planets with a large iron core – and the outer boundary of the habitable zone is not influenced by the interior structure. It is, however, more difficult for planets with a thin mantle (in our test case, with a thickness of 10% of the planet's radius) to initiate plate tectonics.

Our results indicate that the interior structure may strongly influence the amount of CO2 in planetary atmospheres and, thereby, the habitability of rocky planets. To obtain better constraints on the interior structure accurate measurements of size and mass are necessary.