Abstract
The habitable zone (HZ) is conventionally the thin shell of space around a star within which liquid water is thermally stable on the surface of an Earth-like planet (Kasting et al., 1993). However, life on Earth is not restricted to the surface and includes a "deep biosphere" reaching several km in depth. Similarly, subsurface liquid water maintained by internal planetary heat could potentially support life well outside conventional HZs. We introduce a new term, subsurface-habitability zone (SSHZ) to denote the range of distances from a star within which rocky planets are habitable at any depth below their surfaces up to a stipulated maximum, and show how SSHZs can be estimated from a model relating temperature, depth and orbital distance. We present results for Earth-like, Mars-like and selected extrasolar terrestrial planets, and conclude that SSHZs are several times wider and include many more planets than conventional surface-based habitable zones. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 312-318 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Planetary and space science |
| Volume | 85 |
| Early online date | 18 Jul 2013 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Sept 2013 |
Bibliographical note
SM and JOJ are grateful to the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) for Aurora Studentships. We thank Dr. Stephen Clifford (LPI), Dr. Ravi Kopparapu (Penn State), and Claire Davis (St. Andrews) for generous technical advice. We thank NormSleep and two anonymous reviewers for constructive reviews of the manuscript
Keywords
- habitable zones
- deep biosphere
- subsurface
- astrobiology
- exobiology
- extrasolar planets
- main-sequence stars
- Mars
- planets
- energy
- clouds
- earths
- life