Multiverse Predictions for Habitability: Number of Potentially Habitable Planets

Abstract

How good is our universe at making habitable planets? The answer to this depends on which factors are important for life: Does a planet need to be Earth mass? Does it need to be inside the temperate zone? are systems with hot Jupiters habitable? Here, we adopt different stances on the importance of each of these criteria to determine their effects on the probabilities of measuring the observed values of several physical constants. We find that the presence of planets is a generic feature throughout the multiverse, and for the most part conditioning on their particular properties does not alter our conclusions much. We find conflict with multiverse expectations if planetary size is important and it is found to be uncorrelated with stellar mass, or the mass distribution is too steep. The existence of a temperate circumstellar zone places tight lower bounds on the fine structure constant and electron to proton mass ratio.

arXiv comment34 pages, 5 figures and 5 tables, v2: matches published version

References in corpus (67)

• The Origin of the Mass--Metallicity Relation: Insights from 53,000 Star-Forming Galaxies in the SDSS
• Habitable Zones Around Main-Sequence Stars: New Estimates
• Seven temperate terrestrial planets around the nearby ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1
• The California-Kepler Survey. III. A Gap in the Radius Distribution of Small Planets
• Shrinking binary and planetary orbits by Kozai cycles with tidal friction
• Protoplanetary Disks and Their Evolution
• The false positive rate of Kepler and the occurrence of planets
• Towards a Deterministic Model of Planetary Formation I: a Desert in the Mass and Semi Major Axis Distributions of Extra Solar Planets
• Dynamical Outcomes of Planet-Planet Scattering
• The Keck Planet Search: Detectability and the Minimum Mass and Orbital Period Distribution of Extrasolar Planets
• Most 1.6 Earth-Radius Planets are not Rocky
• The evaporation valley in the Kepler planets
• Giant Planet Occurrence in the Stellar Mass-Metallicity Plane
• Origins of Hot Jupiters
• Core-powered mass loss and the radius distribution of small exoplanets
• Planet formation around stars of various masses: The snow line and the frequency of giant planets
• Building Terrestrial Planets
• Photoevaporation of Circumstellar Disks due to External FUV Radiation in Stellar Aggregates
• A Steeper than Linear Disk Mass-Stellar Mass Scaling Relation
• Dimensionless constants, cosmology and other dark matters
• Predictions from Quantum Cosmology
• Reversing type II migration: resonance trapping of a lighter giant protoplanet
• The Mass and Size Distribution of Planetesimals Formed by the Streaming Instability. I. The Role of Self-Gravity
• Increased insolation threshold for runaway greenhouse processes on Earth like planets
• On the diversity and statistical properties of protostellar discs
• The Universal Relation of Galactic Chemical Evolution: The Origin of the Mass-Metallicity Relation
• WASP-47: A Hot Jupiter System with Two Additional Planets Discovered by K2
• In Situ Formation and Dynamical Evolution of Hot Jupiter Systems
• The great dichotomy of the Solar System: small terrestrial embryos and massive giant planet cores
• Strong Dependence of the Inner Edge of the Habitable Zone on Planetary Rotation Rate
• A Plateau in the Planet Population Below Twice the Size of Earth
• Photoevaporation and High-Eccentricity Migration Created the Sub-Jovian Desert
• Exotic Earths: Forming Habitable Worlds with Giant Planet Migration
• A decreased probability of habitable planet formation around low-mass stars
• Formation of TRAPPIST-1 and other compact systems
• On disc driven inward migration of resonantly coupled planets with application to the system around GJ876
• The radial dependence of pebble accretion rates: A source of diversity in planetary systems I. Analytical formulation
• Why is the CMB fluctuation level 10^{-5}?
• Formation of close in Super-Earths \& Mini-Neptunes: Required Disk Masses \& Their Implications
• On the function describing the stellar initial mass function
• The Dispersal of Protoplanetary Disks
• Metallicity, planet formation, and disc lifetimes
• Are Planetary Systems Filled to Capacity? A Study Based on Kepler Results
• The (In)Stability of Planetary Systems
• Planet-planet scattering leads to tightly packed planetary systems
• Convergent Migration Renders TRAPPIST-1 Long-lived
• Migration-driven diversity of super-Earth compositions
• Planet population synthesis driven by pebble accretion in cluster environments
• Life at the Interface of Particle Physics and String Theory
• The First Planets: the Critical Metallicity for Planet Formation
• Orbital migration and the frequency of giant planet formation
• Jupiter Analogues Orbit Stars with an Average Metallicity Close to that of the Sun
• Planet formation around stars of various masses: Hot super-Earths
• A New Empirical Constraint on the Prevalence of Technological Species in the Universe
• Recent developments in planet migration theory
• From Disks to Planets
• The Astronomical Reach of Fundamental Physics
• The language of exoplanet ranking metrics needs to change
• Long Term Planetary Habitability and the Carbonate-Silicate Cycle
• Planets in Other Universes: Habitability constraints on density fluctuations and galactic structure
• Constraints on Alternate Universes: Stars and habitable planets with different fundamental constants
• Asteroid impacts on terrestrial planets: The effects of super-Earths and the role of the ${\nu }_6$ resonance
• A Secular Resonant Origin for the Loneliness of Hot Jupiters
• Survival Function Analysis of Planet Size Distribution with GAIA Data Release 2 Updates
• Below One Earth Mass: The Detection, Formation, and Properties of Subterrestrial Worlds
• Multiverse Predictions for Habitability: The Number of Stars and their Properties
• Multiverse Predictions for Habitability: Fraction of Life that Develops Intelligence

Cited by in corpus (8)

• On the wall velocity dependence of electroweak baryogenesis
• Is Cosmological Tuning Fine or Coarse?
• Multiverse Predictions for Habitability: Fraction of Planets that Develop Life
• Multiverse Predictions for Habitability: Fraction of Life that Develops Intelligence
• Multiverse Predictions for Habitability: Planetary Characteristics
• Multiverse Predictions for Habitability: Element Abundances
• Multiverse Predictions for Habitability: Stellar and Atmospheric Habitability
• Multiverse Predictions for Habitability: Origin of Life Scenarios