Does plate tectonics make conditions for life more likely to arise?

Question

Does plate tectonics make conditions for life more likely to arise?

Answer 1

Well if you take clues from our planet,  there have been bacteria and other life form that live around volcanic formations like fumeroles and volcanic hot spots.  These life forms live in conditions that would kill most any other form of life.  High temps, poisonous atmospheres, much like a mars or venus.    So does it make it more likely?  I would say the associated vulcanism that comes from plate tectonics would give it a fair chance.

Answer 2

The volcanoes eject material that causes primitive atmospheres. So yes, an atmosphere puts a planet one step closer to being able to support life.

Answer 3

"Systems Theorists" would say so, and I would agree.

Here's a short excerpt from a good article:

"Only in recent years have scientists recognized the importance of plate tectonics in maintaining Earth’s long-term temperature stability, through global recirculation of carbon dioxide from the planet’s interior into the atmosphere, he said.

“Because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, it helps to keep our planet warm,” he said. “Of course, too much of it is not good, but without this cycle over the centuries the temperature would drop and you might have the ‘Snowball Earth’ scenario.”

Plate tectonics also provides diverse geological environments, like mountains, which promote biodiversity, Solomatov said."

Tectonics are a lot more than earthquakes and volcanism. Since earth has tectonics and earth also has life it's reasonable to assume that tectonics may somehow be directly related to life. As usual, in science, "evidence and co-existing factors may NOT "prove" causality. But it's still very important to look at the whole picture IMO.

It's an interesting and legitimate idea that life "may have" been somehow "transported" to earth via meteors or other extraterrestial means BUT it's by no means the only one and far from an answer to how "that" life originated.

If "life" is a result of just the "right" physical processes there's nothing that says these processes could not "begin" in many places at different times. Of course, there's nothing to say that it did either.

We may never know (gasp) but, to me, it's the journey not the destination :-)

Answer 4

Not in and of itself.

Though, the volcanism which is associated with the underlying processes can provide energy and chemicals which may be useful but you can get volcanism away from spreading/subduction zones which can cause conditions suitable to harbour life.

Answer 5

I don't think that earthquakes can significantly affect the conditions for life to appear and evolve!

Answer 6

I feel that they (astrobiologists, astrophysicists, astronomers, and other scientists) think that plate tectonics did, indeed, make conditions for life more likely to arise.  Even though they aren't really evolutionary scientists.  I feel that they still "think" so.  

Answer 7

No. But they can create a higher evolution pressure, accelerating the development of complex life forms, simply by the fact of producing changing environments, which challenge existing primitive life forms. But first, life has to get a start.