A whole-planet model of the Earth without life for terrestrial exoplanet studies

TL;DR

This study develops a comprehensive model of Earth without life to understand planetary habitability and aid in interpreting future exoplanet biosignature observations, demonstrating that life is not necessary for maintaining habitable conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a coupled interior-atmosphere evolution model of abiotic Earth, providing insights into habitability without life and generating realistic spectra for exoplanet studies.

Findings

Life is not required to sustain habitable surface conditions.

The model reproduces Earth's key observations over 4.5 Gyr.

Generated spectra aid in interpreting biosignatures for exoplanets.

Abstract

As the only known habitable (and inhabited) planet in the universe, Earth informs our search for life elsewhere. Future telescopes like the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will soon look for life on rocky worlds around Sun-like stars, so it is critical that we understand how to distinguish habitable planets from inhabited planets. However, it remains unknown if life is necessary to maintain a habitable planet, or how all of the components of an evolving planet impact habitability over time. To address these open questions, we present a coupled interior-atmosphere evolution model of the Earth without life from 50 Myr to 5 Gyr that reproduces 19 key observations of the pre-industrial Earth within measurement uncertainties after 4.5 Gyr. We also produce a reflected light spectrum covering the possible wavelength range of HWO. Our findings support the view that life is not required to maintain habitable surface conditions. The model presented here is apt for predicting the long-term habitability of Earth-like exoplanets via evolving bulk properties. By generating realistic reflected light spectra from evolved atmospheric states, this model represents significant progress towards whole-planet modeling, which may ultimately provide a robust abiotic baseline for interpreting biosignature observations with HWO.