Earthlike Plate Tectonics and Ocean–Continental Balance as Constraints on the Drake Equation and the Fermi Paradox
To the point
According to Stern and Gerya, intelligent life on rocky planets likely requires both plate tectonics and a mix of oceans and continents, which would reduce the chance that life evolves into an intelligent civilization by at least 500 times and put the overall probability of those conditions at about 0.002, with future telescopes able to test these ideas.
