JULY 2020

How can dust make planets

more suitable for life?

Authors:
Ian Boutle, Manoj Joshi, Nathan Mayne and others
Associate editor:
Elitsa Panayotova

Abstract
Have you read His Dark Materials or seen its movie are habitable. We learned that dust can cool the hot surface
adaptation The Golden Compass? In the imaginary world and warm the climate of a planet, making it more suitable
created by the author Philip Pullman, dust was the most for life. On the other hand, larger amounts of dust can make
important thing – the material which connected it to ours. it hard to look for such planets. And actually, if a planet does
host life, dust might hide the signs of it!
It turns out that even in real life, dust is important to worlds
outside of Earth! Especially if we are trying to find out if they

Introduction
Have you ever dreamed of going into outer space? There down the planet. On the other hand, dust can prevent
are millions of planets outside our Solar System; we call warmth from the surface escaping into space (aka the
them exoplanets. Finding life (or conditions suitable for life) greenhouse effect). Which effect would prevail on a tidally-
on a different planet is a key goal for many space missions. locked planet? What about a non-locked one?
But what does ‘suitable’ mean? We believe the planet has to
be warm enough to have liquid water on its surface. After
all, water is absolutely vital for life on Earth.
Planets get their warmth from the star they orbit. On Earth,
we get our warmth from the Sun – a yellow dwarf star. But
most stars in our galaxy are red dwarfs, which are much
smaller and cooler than our Sun. The only chance for a
planet orbiting a red dwarf to be warm and suitable for life
(or habitable) is for it to be very close to the star. But then
gravity ‘locks’ the planet to that star – it always has the
same side facing it. (We also call these types of planets
tidally-locked.) They have a warm dayside and a dark side
which can get pretty cold.
This is where airborne dust can come to the rescue. Dust
is found on dry land surfaces that are not solid rock and it This is what we imagine Proxima b looks like - a tidally-locked planet,
can be picked up by winds. So the more dry land there is, orbiting Proxima Centauri - the closest star to the Sun.
the more dust there should be – both on the surface and (Image: European Southern Observatory)
in the planet’s atmosphere. Airborne dust deflects starlight
stopping it from reaching the planet’s surface. This cools

More free science teaching resources at: www.ScienceJournalForKids.org 1

 JULY 2020
HOW CAN DUST MAKE PLANETS MORE SUITABLE FOR LIFE?

Methods
We considered two types of planets:
1. A tidally-locked planet orbiting a red dwarf. We used the
properties of a planet called Proxima Centauri b (or Proxima b
for short).
2. A non-tidally locked planet orbiting a yellow dwarf, with
planetary properties taken from Earth.
We used a climate model created for Earth but applied it to
an exoplanet. This model already takes into account dust
particles and their movement in order to understand the
climate of Earth’s desert areas. It includes many atmospheric
parameters (such as surface pressure, the concentration of
oxygen, methane, etc.). It also includes information about
the planet’s surface and other properties (such as how fast it
rotates, its radius, how much light it receives, etc).
For both types of planets, we ran the model with different
percentages of land cover. The more land there is, the more
dust there could be, but the less water.
Furthermore, for each planet and climate we conducted two
simulations:
One without dust
One with dust particles.
This allows us to assess the effects of dust.

For the curious: There are different sizes of dust particles. The planetary winds can lift the larger particles but then
quickly return them to the surface, so they don't travel far. However, when these large particles impact the surface,
they help lift the smaller dust particles into the atmosphere. These are not that heavy, so they travel further and stay
in the atmosphere for longer.

Results
After running our model, we found that: Thus, dust cools down non-locked planets because
its particles deflect the starlight and this cancels out the
Starlight reaches a small area of tidally-locked
greenhouse effect of dust.
planets - the dayside. (Fig. 1a)
On the other hand, on the dayside of locked planets,
Starlight reaches a greater area of non-locked
dust deflects the radiation coming from the star. The
planets – the most at the equator and the least at the
cooling effect wins over the heating effect.
poles. (Fig. 1b)
On the dark side of locked planets, there is no
radiation from the star (and thus no deflection), so the
Please see
heating effect wins over the cooling effect.
Figure 1 on Page 3

The winds on the dayside of the locked planet, however,

spread the dust to the dark side.
Our model also suggests that dust can postpone the water
The winds on the non-locked planet have a difficult time loss of a planet. This can increase the time it remains
spreading dust to the poles. habitable.

2
 JULY 2020
HOW CAN DUST MAKE PLANETS MORE SUITABLE FOR LIFE?

1a. Tidally-locked planet 1b. Non-tidally locked plant

Figure 1:
The amount of illumination each planet received on its surface. What is the main difference between the two planets?

Discussion
Our results strongly suggest that airborne dust can greatly On the downside, dust could make it harder for us to find
widen the habitable zone on tidally-locked planets – that is, possible habitable (or inhabited!) planets. When we search
even planets further from the star could support life. Dust for the possibility of life on another planet, we look for
first cools the dayside, which otherwise can get pretty hot. gases such as oxygen, methane and ozone. We call these
Second, it warms the dark side, which otherwise could get molecules biomarkers because they suggest that some life
really cold. processes may be taking place. But the more dust is in the
atmosphere, the more hidden these gases are. So we might
What’s more, dust can postpone the water loss of a planet.
think a planet is uninhabitable because it lacks these gases
When its atmosphere gets too hot and humid, the water in
when in fact they are just hidden by dust. This is another
the oceans can evaporate. The more water is lost over time,
reason we believe that future studies concerning possible
the more land is exposed. But as we said, the more land
habitable planets should always take airborne dust into
there is, the more dust and thus the cooler the dayside gets.
account.
So it’s very possible that dust may actually delay the point
when planets lose their oceans and are no longer suitable
for life.

Conclusion
Our planet Earth is an amazing system! The Sun has kept The universe is a pretty enormous place, so chances are
Earth warm enough for billions of years, which has made there are other planets like ours. Imagine how wonderful
life possible. But then, living organisms are also helping it would be if dust turned out to be the key to them, just
shape Earth’s climate through biochemical feedbacks. as Lyra Belacqua – the heroine of Philip Pullman's His Dark
Materials trilogy – discovered.

3
 JULY 2020
HOW CAN DUST MAKE PLANETS MORE SUITABLE FOR LIFE?

Glossary of Key Terms

Biomarkers – molecules such as oxygen, methane and ozone which may be the result of a life process (e.g. respiration). When
we look for life on another planet, we actually look for these biomarker molecules.
Climate model – a scientific model is a computer program that uses our knowledge of natural processes to predict outcomes,
make hypotheses and explain phenomena. (Meteorologists use weather models to forecast the weather; climate scientists use
climate models to predict changes in the climate in the long run.)
Dayside – the side of a planet that is always facing its primary star.
Dust – small particles of solid matter, often coming from ground-down rock. With diameters of 1/1000 of a mm (or 1/25000 of
an inch), they are much smaller than sand particles on a beach. They can actually be similar to smoke. (Winds pick up dust from
the land surface and spread it around.)
Exoplanet – a planet outside the Solar System.
Feedback (or climate change feedback) – biochemical processes (such as bacterial respiration) which have helped shape
Earth’s climate over millions of years. Human activities (such as releasing CO2 into the atmosphere through fossil fuel burning)
are also important feedbacks currently changing Earth’s climate.
Gravity – the force by which a planet (or another body) draws objects toward itself. (The force of gravity keeps all the planets in
the Solar System orbiting around the Sun.)
Greenhouse effect – trapping heat on the surface of a planet.
Habitable planet – a planet is habitable if it can maintain an environment suitable for life.
Habitable zone – the distance from a star in which a planet could have liquid water on its surface and possibly support life.
Locked (tidally-locked) planet – a planet (or another astronomical body) which always has the same face toward the object it
orbits. (The Moon is tidally locked to Earth.)
Orbit – to move in a circle around another body (e.g. Earth orbits the Sun.)
Proxima Centauri b – a planet orbiting the red dwarf Proxima Centauri (the closest star to the Sun).
Red dwarf – small faint stars with lower temperature (than the Sun).
Yellow dwarf – stars of medium size which shine in bright yellow; the Sun is a yellow dwarf.

Check your understanding

1 What are some differences between a yellow dwarf and a red dwarf? And what examples do we
give here?
2 Why are we interested in tidally-locked planets?

3 What effect does dust have on the dayside of a tidally-locked planet? What about the dark side?

4 How does dust postpone the water loss of a planet?

What are some examples of climate change feedback?

5
REFERENCES
Ian A. Boutle, Manoj Joshi, F. Hugo Lambert, Nathan J. Mayne, Duncan Lyster, James Manners, Robert Ridgway & Krisztian Kohary
(2020) Mineral dust increases the habitability of terrestrial planets but confounds biomarker detection. Nature Communications.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16543-8
NASA: Explore Earth and Space (for kids)
https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/
Planets for Kids: Exoplanets
https://www.planetsforkids.org/the-universe/exoplanets.html