In the quest to find habitable planetary models in preparation for future space explorations, a team of scientists discovered that the universe may be filled with “egg-shell” planets.
According to an international research team led by NASA, old rocky planets that are sufficiently distant from their parent stars will have a hard and thick lithosphere similar to Earth’s lithosphere, while worlds that are close to their parent stars and relatively young may be egg-shell planets with a lithosphere only a few kilometers thick.
Egg-shell planet – (Graphic from NASA/JPL-Caltech).
Dr. Paul Byrne, a planetary geologist working at North Carolina State University and Washington University in St. Louis, one of the leading researchers of the study, stated that the structure of the lithosphere will help us predict whether it has the potential to form hills and possess a dynamic geological process like Earth.
Therefore, they constructed a series of planetary models based on known rocky planets and assessed the potential existence of numerous egg-shell planets, according to Sci-News.
Egg-shell planets will have a crust similar to certain lowland areas on Venus. They may also have suitable temperature conditions or lie within the habitable zone of their parent star, but they would be the type of planets that astronomers should overlook, as their fragile lithosphere would make it difficult to sustain long-term plate tectonics, which are essential for forming mountains or other complex landforms.
On Earth, it is the plate tectonics and other geological activities that have helped our planet maintain a stable atmosphere, climate, and foster the emergence and evolution of life.
Plate tectonics can be understood as the movement of the Earth’s crustal plates. Currently, the Earth has at least 15 plates that are in motion, which have caused the world to form supercontinents that later broke apart into the continents we see today.
The research was recently published in the scientific journal Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
