Evolutionary advantages of the Earth

[Proteus]

Aside from being in the habitable zone and having water, what particular evolutionary advantages does the Earth (or the solar system it floats in) have?

 

A few I've found so far:

 

1) The protosphere, the nebulous disk from which the solar system arose, formed of matter from a heavier star which contained a wide variety of heavier materials.

2) The Earth was formed of a mass which contained a wide variety of elements.

3) The Earth was protected from the impact of heavier asteroids by the proximity of the gas giant Jupiter, the vacuum cleaner of the solar system

4) Meanwhile, smaller asteroids and comets, having less gravitational attraction to Jupiter, were let through into the innermost solar system, providing water, organic materials and minerals.

5) By an amazing stroke of fortune, our planet has a stable moon, which is highly exceptional for terrestrial planets. Usually, natural satellites of planets our size either collide with the planet or rapidly drift away from them. By causing oceanic tides, the moon brings many advantages to the Earth's biology and in particular to its evolution. Without it, it may have taken far longer for life to migrate onto coastal areas and later inland, and for all we know it might never have happened had some of the first sea animals not been swept away to the shore.

6) The Earth has a magnetosphere which repels cosmic radiation and solar mass ejections which would otherwise almost fully sterilize the planet.

7) The Earth has an ozone layer which offers a protection against UV rays. However, as ozone is relatively likely to form in an atmosphere rich in oxygen, this is linked to the probability of high atmospheric oxygen.

8) In addition to having water at all, the Earth has actual oceans,

9) The Earth has plate tectonics, which furthers biodiversification compartmentalizing the earth into many separate as well as non-separate areas, thereby allowing the biosphere to experiment with evolution in different environments; adding to the variety of the terrain will add to the variety of the life-forms inhabiting it.

[Sisyphus]

Since we only have one example so far of a planet with life, it's hard to say what's necessary, what's an advantage, etc. In other words, if Earth were different in one of those ways, would there be no life possible, or could there just be different kinds of life? Since the only life we know evolved here, everything kind of looks like an advantage, for us. What you've got is a list of things that would make life more difficult or impossible for us, if Earth were that way instead of the way it is (the way that led to us being here to wonder about it).

[J.C.MacSwell]

Aside from being in the habitable zone and having water, what particular evolutionary advantages does the Earth (or the solar system it floats in) have?

 

A few I've found so far:

 

1) The protosphere, the nebulous disk from which the solar system arose, formed of matter from a heavier star which contained a wide variety of heavier materials.

2) The Earth was formed of a mass which contained a wide variety of elements.

3) The Earth was protected from the impact of heavier asteroids by the proximity of the gas giant Jupiter, the vacuum cleaner of the solar system

4) Meanwhile, smaller asteroids and comets, having less gravitational attraction to Jupiter, were let through into the innermost solar system, providing water, organic materials and minerals.

5) By an amazing stroke of fortune, our planet has a stable moon, which is highly exceptional for terrestrial planets. Usually, natural satellites of planets our size either collide with the planet or rapidly drift away from them. By causing oceanic tides, the moon brings many advantages to the Earth's biology and in particular to its evolution. Without it, it may have taken far longer for life to migrate onto coastal areas and later inland, and for all we know it might never have happened had some of the first sea animals not been swept away to the shore.

6) The Earth has a magnetosphere which repels cosmic radiation and solar mass ejections which would otherwise almost fully sterilize the planet.

7) The Earth has an ozone layer which offers a protection against UV rays. However, as ozone is relatively likely to form in an atmosphere rich in oxygen, this is linked to the probability of high atmospheric oxygen.

8) In addition to having water at all, the Earth has actual oceans,

9) The Earth has plate tectonics, which furthers biodiversification compartmentalizing the earth into many separate as well as non-separate areas, thereby allowing the biosphere to experiment with evolution in different environments; adding to the variety of the terrain will add to the variety of the life-forms inhabiting it.

 

5) is interesting. Large areas of half time land / half time sea (and all other ratios between low and high tide) might certainly help transition from sea to land as well as force bio-diversification.

[Mokele]

I dunno about the sea-to-land transitions - from what I know, most seem to have occurred in shallow freshwater rivers, lakes and swamps.

[D H]

This list raises a couple of questions: Which of these are truly significant for the emergence of life, and how often do these characteristics arise?