Dark Matter And The Habitability of Planets

TL;DR

This paper explores how dark matter interactions with planets could provide enough energy to sustain liquid water and potentially support life, especially on planets in regions with high dark matter density.

Contribution

It introduces the idea that dark matter annihilation could influence planetary habitability, a novel perspective linking dark matter physics with astrobiology.

Findings

Dark matter capture and annihilation could produce significant energy in large planets.

Planets in high dark matter density regions may sustain liquid water without stellar energy.

Dark matter could play a role in enabling life on planets otherwise inhospitable.

Abstract

In many models, dark matter particles can elastically scatter with nuclei in planets, causing those particles to become gravitationally bound. While the energy expected to be released through the subsequent annihilations of dark matter particles in the interior of the Earth is negligibly small (a few megawatts in the most optimistic models), larger planets that reside in regions with higher densities of slow moving dark matter could plausibly capture and annihilate dark matter at a rate high enough to maintain liquid water on their surfaces, even in the absence of additional energy from starlight or other sources. On these rare planets, it may be dark matter rather than light from a host star that makes it possible for life to emerge, evolve, and survive.