- Scientists have spent an incredible amount of manpower to determine the conditions under which life is supported, and why the earth is so perfect for living things.
- Now a researcher has simulated 100,000 planets to try to determine how lucky we are that the earth has remained inhabited for as long as it is.
- As it turns out, we are incredibly happy that the earth seems to have the habit of returning to habitability even after catastrophic events.
It goes without saying, but if you have not considered it for a while, I will mention it: we are really very happy that we live on earth. The earth is, as far as we know, the only planet that has ever supported life, and it has done so for billions of years. It is an incredible achievement and one that places the earth in a group of one.
This is not to say that life on earth has always been easy. In fact, during his tenure, our planet faced many extinction events as a bastion for life. However, it has always managed to bring things back into a kind of uniform state. Of course, it would have taken millions and millions of years before that happened, but it always happened fast enough so that life could go on and flourish again. Now a scientist has taken it upon himself to see how lucky we are that the earth has survived so long without life being completely sniffed out, and the data is incredibly interesting.
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Like Phil Plait from SYFY wire reports, the experiment is the subject of a new paper published in Communications Earth & Environment. In the article, researcher Toby Tyrrell explains that the earth remained habitable for three to four billion years, which fueled his desire to perform a bunch of simulations and see how happy the earth really is.
The Earth’s climate has remained habitable for 3 or 4 billion years. This presents a mystery (the ‘habitability problem’) because it seems that the loss of habitability was more likely. The brightness of the sun increased by 30% during this time, which would cause sterility if not counteracted. Furthermore, the Earth’s climate is unbalanced and can deteriorate to less than one million years to freezing conditions. Here I present results of a new simulation in which thousands of planets were randomly generated climate feedback. Each planetary set-up has been tested to see if it remains habitable over a period of 3 billion years. The conventional view attributes the extended habitability of the earth only to stabilization mechanisms. Rather, the simulation results shown here show that chance also plays a role in the outcomes of habitability. The long-term habitability of the earth was therefore most likely a conditional rather than an inevitable outcome.
Tyrrell assigned mathematical values to the 100,000 virtual planets he imitated. The climate of each planet was randomized in that some feedback loops would be similar to the earth – the earth having too much CO2 would cause it to become too hot, producing even more CO2, and so on. The actual climate was not simulated, but the values representing the variables were assigned and subsequently detected while each planet was simulated 100 times.
The temperature of each planet has been monitored for 3 billion (virtual) years. Out of the absolutely enormous number of simulated planets, only one planet could remain inhabited during all 100 simulations. Other planets remained habitable during some simulated runs, but not others, but only 9% of the planets remained habitable during at least one run of 3 billion years.
Needless to say, the fact that the earth has sustained itself through asteroid impact, rapid cooling and maybe even a supervolcano eruption or two is very, very happy. If one of these events had completely wiped out life, I would not have written here, and you would not have read it.
Mike Wehner has been reporting on technology and video games for the past decade, discussing news and trends in VR, portable, smartphones and future technology. Mike was recently technical editor at The Daily Dot and has been featured in USA Today, Time.com and numerous other web and print stores. His love of reporting is second only to his game addiction.