Super-Earths Might Not Protect Life

Artwork credit: David Agular, NASA

I’ve always assumed that so-called super-Earths would be the first place to go hunting for extraterrestrial life beyond the solar system.

Statistically, there should be more of them than “normal” Earths. We live on a puny space rock only 8,000 miles across.Super-Earths could range from two to as much as ten times Earth’s mass. They could hold onto thick atmospheres, have rigorous volcanism, and deep oceans.

But we are able to live on Earth’s surface only because it has a 60,000-mile diameter protective force field that is almost straight out of a science fiction movie. Earth’s magnetic field traps energetic particles blazing out from the sun. This million-mile an hour subatomic blast would irradiate life on Earth.

We are unique in that all the other terrestrial planets in the solar system, Mercury, Venus and Mars have weak magnetic fields. The consequences are that Venus’ atmosphere is continuously being stripped off into space by the solar wind. Mars’ atmosphere was largely lost into space as the Red Planet’s magnetic field petered out billions of years ago.

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