The Spanish astronomer carried out statistical modeling of the amount of water and land on the surface of terrestrial planets. Most of them should be almost entirely covered by the oceans.
"Should we expect most inhabited planets to have a blue pearl terrestrial appearance?" Asks Fergus Simpson of the Barcelona Institute for Space Sciences. Indeed, the vast expanses of oceans and continents on our planet are, apparently, a rare case. A unique combination of a number of factors allows the Earth to maintain a delicate balance between the total amount of water, the volume and rate of its circulation, etc.
Even among planets of similar sizes and at an appropriate distance from the Sun, these factors can easily develop in a completely different way, and, according to Simpson, most of these planets should be dominated by either land or water. But what exactly? Simulations carried out by the scientist showed that the second option should be much more common, and almost all exoplanets suitable for life are oceans with rare land islands occupying less than 10 percent. He cites these results in an article published by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
It is worth remembering that on Earth, water covers 71 percent of the surface, so it is somewhat knocked out of the bulk of planets of a similar type. Fergus Simpson explains this uniqueness by the anthropic principle, which in this case may sound - "The Earth is so ideal for life, because life originated here."
On the other hand, the excess of land on such planets is also not the best option. Simpson's simulations showed that too-large continental areas expand the area of difficult deserts.
Sergey Vasiliev