On the Prevalence of Ocean Worlds, Their Suitability for Biology, and Speculation Regarding the Fermi Paradox
When
Where
Dr. Alan Stern
Associate Vice President
Southwest Research Institute, Boulder
Our solar system is replete with worlds possessing interior water oceans. Such worlds are likely to be common in extrasolar planetary systems as well. I will discuss some implications regarding the development of life and intelligent civilizations if Interior Water Ocean Worlds (IWOWs) where their presence is cloaked by massive overlying burdens of rock and/or ice between their abode and the external Universe. IWOWs are habitable in a wider range of host worlds and stellar and galactic environments than do worlds with exterior water oceans. As a result, they may contain life more frequently than exterior water ocean worlds like Earth. However, for the reason discussed above, such life, even if intelligent, is less likely to develop an awareness of the Universe and space travel, and therefore less likely to communicate purposely or via electromagnetic leakage than are civilizations on external water ocean worlds, like Earth.