[Rockhounds] Plate Tectonics Might Only Occur on 0.003% of Planets. That Makes Earth Very Special Indeed.

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Plate tectonics, oceans, and continents might just be the secret
ingredients for complex life on Earth. And if these geological features are
rare elsewhere in the universe, then perhaps that explains why we haven’t
yet discovered intelligent alien life. New research
<https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54700-x> from American and
Swiss Earth scientists suggests that these ingredients represent missing
variables in the famous Drake equation
<https://www.universetoday.com/39966/drake-equation-1/>, devised more than
half a century ago to estimate the chances of finding advanced
civilizations in our galaxy. Including these new variables could completely
rewrite the probability of detecting intelligent life in the Milky Way.

The impetus for this research, with its galaxy-spanning implications, began
with a mystery right here at home – why did life take so long to move
beyond simple organisms?

“Life has been around on Earth for about 4 billion years, but complex
organisms like animals didn’t appear until about 600 million years ago,
which is not long after the modern episode of plate tectonics began,” said
Robert Stern
<https://news.utdallas.edu/science-technology/geology-alone-in-milky-way-2024/>
of
the University of Texas at Dallas. “Plate tectonics really jump-starts the
evolution machine, and we think we understand why.”

https://www.universetoday.com/167659/plate-tectonics-might-only-occur-on-0-003-of-planets-that-makes-earth-very-special-indeed/