[HN Gopher] Speculoos-2c: A new potentially habitable earth
___________________________________________________________________
Speculoos-2c: A new potentially habitable earth
Author : wiz21c
Score : 141 points
Date : 2022-09-07 10:47 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.news.uliege.be)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.news.uliege.be)
| danabrams wrote:
| Phew! Found a new one just in time.
| moconnor wrote:
| 36% larger radius than Earth means ~2.5x more volume. _If_ it has
| a similar density to Earth 2.5g would probably stretch the
| definition of habitable for humans. This doesn 't rule out
| habitation by other life, of course.
|
| Cool that we're finding interesting planets though! An actually
| human-habitable planet would, I think, have a significant
| cultural impact here on Earth.
| shireboy wrote:
| Assuming organisms adapted to live there, it would be harder
| for them to reach escape velocity to leave their planet. Is
| there a cut-off where known physics says it's impractical to
| leave a planet? Ie the most powerful practical fuel wouldn't be
| enough for any mass to reach escape velocity?
| jmillikin wrote:
| https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/14383/how-much-
| big...
|
| There's a table in that link of how much reaction mass is
| needed to reach orbit. At 1.5g it requires about 500% as much
| rocket as Earth. At 2.5g the number is ... much larger.
| est31 wrote:
| > 36% larger radius than Earth means ~2.5x more volume. If it
| has a similar density to Earth 2.5g would probably stretch the
| definition of habitable for humans.
|
| Volume scales cubically, yes. And therefore, also does the
| gravitational pull by the object at the same distance to the
| center. But due to the larger radius, you are also further
| away. Gravity respects the inverse square law. This means that
| the surface gravity of an object that maintains the same
| density increases linearly with the object's size.
|
| In other words, you would have 1.36g on the planet's surface,
| not 2.5g. But that's assuming same density. Even within our own
| solar system this is not true: Mars's surface gravity is 0.38
| of earth's gravity but 0.53 of earth's radius. The gravity is
| lower than it would be if Mars had the same density as earth.
| a3w wrote:
| same density, higher size does not mean 2.5 g. Only some of
| that mass is below you. Some is to the front, right, back,
| left, where vectors in sum are zero.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| This is incorrect, the decrease comes from being at a higher
| altitude from the center of the planet, see gauss' law for
| gravity. If you kept the altitude the same the force would be
| exactly proportional as expected.
| anonymous_sorry wrote:
| Also, all the "extra" mass is further away from you, and
| gravitation is proprtional to distance cubed. Interesting.
|
| Apparently surface gravity is proportional to mass/radius^2
| [0]
|
| Assuming constant density as per the grandparent, the mass
| increases with the cube of the radius.
|
| Which simplifies to surface gravity being proportional to the
| radius of the planet.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_gravity
| mamikonyana wrote:
| It actually gets you 1.36g, given the same density (your
| assumption) and using the fact that you are further away from
| the center of mass you get
|
| g ~ density x radius [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_of_Earth#Depth
| ShredKazoo wrote:
| 2.5g means you weigh 2.5 times as much. So if you're 150lbs on
| Earth that means you'd weigh 375lbs on this new planet.
| Weighing 375lbs is certainly inconvenient, but it's not like
| habitation at 375lbs is impossible, especially if you have a
| scooter.
|
| I wonder what happens if a human child grows up in a 2.5g
| environment. I imagine they grow up to be short, stocky, and
| extremely muscular.
|
| Adaptation probably plays a big role here. If you give a 150lb
| person a suit that weighs 225 lbs and tell them to wear it all
| the time, they probably give up after a few days. But if you
| tell a 150lb person to eat more until they're 375lbs, their
| body has time to adapt.
|
| Since the new planet is 100 light years away, even at the speed
| of light we're talking about a 100-year journey minimum. Maybe
| the generation ship used to make the journey could use
| artificial gravity to smoothly transition from 1g to 2.5g over
| the course of 100 years. Loading the ship with people who are
| stocky & muscular is another option.
|
| I don't think living in enhanced gravity needs to be terrible.
| Astronauts have to exercise more in order to maintain fitness
| in low-gravity environments. It appears to follow that if
| you're living in an enhanced-gravity environment, you can get
| away with exercising a lot less and still maintain fitness :-)
| chasil wrote:
| More importantly, this sounds like planets tidally locked
| around a red dwarf.
|
| Red dwarfs are known for flares that would destroy the
| atmosphere of any nearby planet.
|
| "Although this planet orbits very close to its star, at a
| distance about 10 times shorter than that of Mercury around our
| Sun, the amount of stellar irradiation it receives is still
| low... the star LP 890-9 is about 6.5 times smaller than the
| Sun and has a surface temperature half that of our star."
| ncmncm wrote:
| In any case all its water would be locked up in ice on the
| night side.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| If only we could invent a method to turn ice into water..
| ncmncm wrote:
| Needs heat. But that is all found thousands of km away.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Just use mirrors strategically placed so that light can
| bounce around the horizon so solar can be used to melt
| the ice. Or orbit a giant mirror beaming that heat source
| down. The fact that you think thousands of km away is a
| hard limit just means you're not fully caffinated just
| yet.
| ncmncm wrote:
| If you are in orbit, why land on it at all? Surely there
| are construction materials and ice only light-minutes
| away and not so deep down a gravity well. God knows there
| is nothing else down there of any interest.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Which God knows this? Have you asked and been told this
| by said God? In which manner of appearance did God take
| when conversing said information to you: a burning bush
| or a 60' tall marshmallow icon?
| ncmncm wrote:
| Both at once.
| Razengan wrote:
| > _More importantly, this sounds like planets tidally locked
| around a red dwarf._
|
| Live on the other side? or a narrow habitable band between
| the 2 hemispheres
| ncmncm wrote:
| With exactly zero liquid water available? Not likely.
| Razengan wrote:
| I mean tidally-locked planets/moons in general. Both
| hemispheres would usually be extremes, but maybe with a
| "sweet spot" in between.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| What evolutionary changes would human beings need to adapt to
| 2.5g?
| gizajob wrote:
| Thicker legs
| otikik wrote:
| It might be more feasible to remove a big chunk of matter
| from the planet in question
| avereveard wrote:
| Id's say a stronger circulatory sistem.
|
| Muscles and bone density will need to increase, but we do
| that as part of adaptation, evolution will favor the trait
| long term but regular use will already compensate in part or
| totally the need.
|
| Possibly ankles and knees will need to get stronger as well
| callamdelaney wrote:
| We would only be adapting to 1.36g according to mamikonyana -
| this sounds more plausible. Because gravity is a function of
| size, mass and density. Not only mass.
| imglorp wrote:
| Atmosphere unknown.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Most likely none.
| erehweb wrote:
| Does this or other discoveries give us any better estimates for
| terms in the Drake equation?
| swamp40 wrote:
| > completes an orbit around the star in just 2.7 days
|
| I wonder if you feel centrifugal force spinning that fast around
| a sun?
| jerf wrote:
| The equator of the Earth is spinning much faster, on a much
| tighter radius. Do you "feel centrifugal force" when standing
| there?
|
| It does actually affect your weight a bit, but if you mean what
| I think you mean that it would be something you perceptibly
| feel, it is not.
|
| Moreover, this merely shows that the idea that the magnitude is
| significant isn't a good one. Even more importantly, you don't
| "feel" anything in an orbit ever, because when you're on a
| geodesic, you're in "zero g". You _never_ "feel" anything in an
| orbit, no matter how fast it is. People on the ISS don't "feel
| centrifugal force", because they're in zero G.
|
| (Except tides, if you're large enough, but a single person in
| this orbit is nowhere near large enough or sensitive enough to
| feel any tides.)
| layer8 wrote:
| > The equator of the Earth is spinning much faster, on a much
| tighter radius.
|
| Centrifugal force is proportional to the radius, so a smaller
| radius actually decreases it, for the same angular velocity.
| The reason we associate smaller radiuses with increased force
| is actually because if the energy stays the same, reducing
| the radius increases the angular velocity (like in a
| pirouette), which then "feels" like a stronger force.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Centrifugal force is v^2/r, so smaller r increases it. And
| we have higher v, besides.
| layer8 wrote:
| Centrifugal force is _m_ o2 _r_. Of course, _v_ = o2p _r_
| , which is why you have to divide _v_ 2 by _r_. But if
| you compare based on the rotation period, increasing _r_
| increases the force, for the same rotation period.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| They named their project, and thus this object, after the popular
| Belgian1 speculoos cookie and backronymed it. I'm not sure how I
| feel about that. I don't dislike names with some pop culture
| basis, or even better, old sci-fi (given that there a more of
| those objects than we can dream up names for). On the other hand,
| naming it after a cookie seems frivolous.
|
| 1: Known as speculaas in Dutch.
| Bakary wrote:
| I don't see how pop culture is a-okay as a naming scheme but
| this lekker cookie isn't. It is in fact pop-culture in its own
| way.
|
| Sci-fi names tend to be tiresomely similar since they overuse
| gods names and anglocentric concepts
| eythian wrote:
| Speculaas and Speculoos are somewhat different things.
| Speculaas is older and has more spices, apparently.
| oboes wrote:
| Another project from the same university is TRAPPIST. Named
| after Trappist beers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trappist_beer
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| Well, they've already rounded that corner a while ago with
| TRAPPIST:
|
| > TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small
| Telescope) is a project led by the Origins in Cosmology and
| Astrophysics group (OrCA) of the Department of Astrophysics,
| Geophysics and Oceanography (AGO) of the STAR Institute of the
| University of Liege (Belgium).
|
| https://www.trappist.uliege.be/cms/c_5006023/en/trappist
| Majestic121 wrote:
| Don't worry, it will soon be integrated in Stellaris like the
| TRAPPIST one, so it will become pop culture/sci-fi
| [deleted]
| Agingcoder wrote:
| A speculoos is a belgian biscuit. Someone had fun coming up with
| a backronym I think!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculoos
| lnauta wrote:
| Also a great sandwich spread!
| thenthenthen wrote:
| Cant wait for MITRAILLETTE next to my TRAPPIST
| abecedarius wrote:
| And Mallomars. Always seemed like an sf/fantasy name already.
| keyle wrote:
| They're from Liege, it would be called a ROUTIER :)
| cafeinux wrote:
| Can't wait for two binary system stars to be called
| BELCANTO and MEXICANO
| johnchristopher wrote:
| That's an Herstal thing and it's already being used but for a
| different kind of products, not for space stuff.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I am still not over the whole Biscoff scandal.
| cinntaile wrote:
| These scientists are doing their part to keep the original
| name alive.
| 83 wrote:
| What scandal!? I love Biscoff.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| https://www.thebulletin.be/lotus-biscuits-give-speculoos-
| nam... A scandal it is !
| thiht wrote:
| Sounds like a name for dog treats
| chickenimprint wrote:
| I always thought they were German, but apparently the origin
| has not been conclusively tracked. They are called Speculaas in
| Dutch and Spekulatius in German
| anvandare wrote:
| >SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl
| Stars)
|
| I like silly backronyms like that[0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculoos
| stinos wrote:
| Using a type of beer, TRAPPIST, as 'Transiting Planets and
| Planetesimals Small Telescope' wasn't bad either
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1
| torstenvl wrote:
| Trappist is not a type of beer. It is a type of Catholic
| monastic order. They just _happen_ to make decent beer (and
| jam, and many other things).
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trappists
| stinos wrote:
| _Trappist is not a type of beer._
|
| Ok I guess in English the correct term is indeed 'trappist
| beer', but in Dutch 'trappist' is used to refer to the beer
| as well as the monk/nun; there's a lot more talking about
| beer than about those monks obviously, so you can imagine
| that for me 'trappist' means 'beer' no matter what language
| so pardon my linguistic mistake :)
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Same in French. I guess that whenever one sees the word
| trappist in a conversation, beer comes in mind first.
| Unless you are in a history class.
| biztos wrote:
| In Hungary, Trappist is first and foremost a cheese.
|
| I would even call it the default cheese, though like many
| cheeses it was apparently invented in France:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trappista_cheese
| samatman wrote:
| So this is a category error much like saying French is not
| a type of poodle. I assure you, it is, just as, well, two
| can play at this game
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trappist_beer .
| mgsouth wrote:
| Which raises the question[0], "Why _French_ poodle? " Is
| there a non-French variety? Wikipedia indicates not [1],
| although they probably originated in Germany. [2]
|
| [0] Not "begs". Never "begs the question," even if I am
| being pompously pedantic. [0']
|
| [0'] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question#V
| ernacula...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poodle [1']
|
| [1'] TIL the word "cynalogy"--"the study of matters
| related to canines or domestic dogs."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynology
|
| [2] Also, while the Germans refer to the breed as
| "Pudel," the French call them "Caniche". So of course in
| English we call them <"French"> <German word>.
|
| [3] Rabbits! They went down this hole!
| modernpink wrote:
| There are category category errors being committed on all
| sides. The confusion is arising from the word "type". To
| some, a "type" of beer is a style of beer characterised
| by common ingredients, methods and appearance. To others
| a "type" of beer may be as loosely defined as simply the
| kind of container it is stored in (can, bottle, draught).
| torstenvl wrote:
| The link you posted shows the opposite: Trappists brew
| many types of beer, though arguably Trippels are the most
| common lately.
|
| Saying Trappist is a type of beer is like saying French
| is a type of poodle -- _if you used the label only to
| refer to a poodle bred in France_.
|
| A more apt comparison is saying Bordeaux is a type of
| wine. Bordeaux is a region in France; it is well-known
| for 5-6 types of wine; any Bordeaux wine that qualifies
| for AOC proudly displays its Bordeaux heritage on the
| bottle.
| JoachimS wrote:
| Or Champagne, which are different kinds of sparkling wine
| made in Russia:
|
| https://www.foodandwine.com/news/russia-champagne-law-
| sparkl...
|
| (I see myself out now.)
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| And the type of beer they make is known as Trappist Beer,
| which is what the project is named after. See:
| https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1023/
| sanxiyn wrote:
| In my opinion, H0LiCOW (H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring)
| was a bit too much, trying too hard.
| twic wrote:
| I am currently reading a paper [1] about the Far-side Array for
| Radio Science Investigations of the Dark ages and Exoplanets
| (FARSIDE).
|
| [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.02216
| schwartzworld wrote:
| Reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes' "Get Rid Of Slimy girlS"
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| An orbital period of 2.73 days would mean there's no (earth like)
| seasons and agriculture would not be constrained to growing
| things at specific times of the year. A wheat farmer could split
| their farm into sections and be sowing and harvesting
| continuously.
|
| That's assuming there isn't a cycle from freezing to boiling
| every 2.73 days.
| simmerup wrote:
| The theological implications of finding planets even more
| hospitable than earth will be interesting.
| a3w wrote:
| Oh yes we still have theology. I don't know why. But as long
| as good books like Scott Alexanders Unsong tell me that
| American Pie is a song about the old testament, I do get
| entertainment out of it.
|
| Training your mind to find patterns everywhere can be fun,
| unless you get QAnon out of it. Or, IMHO, religion that
| influences states or bothers non-followers. Contrast the good
| things, though: The aforementioned authors shows in Unsong
| that "Harry Belafonte - There's a Hole in the Bucket" is
| actually about the singluarity in AI/AGI development.
| cwillu wrote:
| http://unsongbook.com/ for the curious:
|
| "Erica," said Ana calmly, "you're going about this the
| wrong way. When Aaron is like this, you can't argue against
| him. You have to beat him at his own game."
|
| "What?"
|
| "For example," said Ana, "Aaron, I propose that the Chevy
| does not represent the Tribe of Levi, but rather the Tribe
| of Issachar."
|
| "Huh?" I asked. "Why?"
|
| "Because," she said, with an ethereally beautiful smile, "a
| Chevy is a car."
|
| "AAAAARGH!" I said. "AAARGH AAAAARGH AAAARRGH AA - ouch!"
| tsol wrote:
| Why do you say that?
|
| Come to think of it, most major religions don't treat the
| earth as something special for humans. In the Abrahamic
| faiths it's specifically not our natural home, which is why
| we have so many issues. In the Hindu faith, from what I
| understand, it's also a place of suffering we are ultimately
| trying to escape. Buddhism also has much the same view.
| v3ss0n wrote:
| Buddhism tries to escape from all forms of the existence
| (31 realms - or dimensions of existance) , not just from
| this earth or universe.
| pygy_ wrote:
| Mirroring the fact that the cephalopod eye doesn't have a
| blind spot unlike the vertebrate one.
| GOONIMMUNE wrote:
| Given that humans evolved to live on Earth, isn't it quite
| unlikely that we'll find planets that are more hospitable (to
| us) than Earth?
| xerox13ster wrote:
| Invasive species evolved to live in the environment in
| which they evolved. Wouldn't it be quite unlikely that
| they'd find environments that are more hospitable (to them)
| than their native habitat?
| roywiggins wrote:
| It is quite unlikely! Most species don't turn invasive.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| The mutants will find the other planets more hospitable.
| perihelions wrote:
| That close to a star, the planet's rotation is probably tidally
| locked with its orbit, which means there's no diurnal *or*
| seasonal cycle. There's a summer hemisphere in permanent
| daylight; a winter hemisphere in permanent night; and a
| temperate twilight zone in between.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Solution: train-farms! Choo-Choo!
| Hithredin wrote:
| That would be as windy as Contrevent
| jerf wrote:
| Probably not. It's not hard to notice that while volatiles
| may flow from the hot side to the cold side, it's generally
| a one-way trip. Most attempts to model such a planet as
| habitable even on the thin strip involve trying to
| hypothesize some way that the volatiles could end up
| circulating rather than simply making the one-way
| migration, but personally I'm yet to hear a convincing way
| that could happen. And that's for the lower bar of "is life
| possible at all", not the much higher bar of "could we be
| happy living there".
|
| YMMV, since it's all opinion and conjecture right now.
|
| But in general I wouldn't expect much wind. The hot side is
| in vacuum because the only volatiles there are the ones
| just baked out of the fried ground or perhaps some volcanic
| activity, and the cold side is in vacuum because
| everything's frozen, and if there is some tiny pressure
| gradient you'd never notice the resulting "wind" as the
| vacuum flows past you, probably at rates roughly comparable
| to what the ISS experiences as "wind" in its low Earth
| orbit.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Wheat is hard to grow in permanent twilight. And, with no
| water, because it is all frozen onto the night side.
|
| This is no more earthlike than Mars.
| evv555 wrote:
| Makes me wonder how much of the day sky is taken up by the star
| during daytime. Would be quite the view at that distance.
| Someone wrote:
| The innermost of the planets is about 2.8 million kilometers
| away from a star with a diameter of 217,000 km, so the angle
| (in radians) would be about 217,000/2,800,000 = 0.0775
| radians or about 4,4 degrees. The sun is about 30 arc minutes
| or half a degree, so this star would have about 9 times the
| diameter, or 80 times the area of our sun.
|
| (Double-check: this planet is about 1/50 as far from its sun
| as earth is from our sun, and its sun has about 1/7 the
| radius of our sun. That would give a rough estimate of the
| relative size of that sun in the planet's sky of 50/7, so say
| 7 times as large as our sun is to us)
|
| I would call that large, but not enormous.
|
| (This ignores effects on perceived size of differences in the
| light spectrum and brightness of the two stars and
| differences between the atmospheres of this planet and earth)
| evv555 wrote:
| That's roughly the size of Jupiter at a distance roughly 7
| times that of the moon from Earth. At those distances you
| could probably see features of the star the same way we see
| craters on the moon.
| appleflaxen wrote:
| It's a sphere next to a point source of light.
|
| So I'm gonna guess... half?
| wtetzner wrote:
| They didn't ask how much of the planet is covered in light.
| They mean how large does the star appear in the sky from
| the planet's surface.
| adamc wrote:
| Given that most of the emitted light is infrared, there would
| be other challenges.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| That's gonna make it tough to keep track of when the pumpkin
| spice latte goes on sale. "Shoot, I missed fall again, guess
| I'll have to wait 48 hours for it to come around again!"
| goombacloud wrote:
| 100 light-years is out of reach for humans, I would say :D
| [deleted]
| layer8 wrote:
| Not necessarily, if we could reach significant fractions of
| light speed. The subjective travel time can be shorter than 100
| years, and approaches zero as you approach the speed of light.
| (Photons don't experience time, so to speak, they are
| everywhere on their trajectory at once.)
| robofanatic wrote:
| suppose we have the tech to travel at a significant fraction
| of light speed, how long will it take for the spacecraft to
| reach that speed and similarly how long will it take to slow
| down when you are approaching a target planet?
| awestroke wrote:
| As your target speed approaches the speed of light, the
| energy required aproaches infinity
| layer8 wrote:
| Of course. But it's a common misconception that traveling a
| distance of N light years will take at least N years
| subjectively. At something like 70% of light speed the
| subjective time already drops below the distance number:
| https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/109776/how-
| long-...
| legohead wrote:
| At 1g constant acceleration, including deceleration, it's only
| 9 years. A flyby is only 5 years [1]
|
| [1] https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/space-travel
| _fat_santa wrote:
| If only wormholes stopped being "theoretical structures"
| speed_spread wrote:
| Haven't you heard? Wormholes are tired, Alcubierre drives is
| where it's at nowadays. All we need now is a way to shovel
| away that pesky dark matter.
| claytongulick wrote:
| Oh, that problem has been solved.
|
| Haven't you heard? Dark matter doesn't exist [1]
|
| Off to the stars!
|
| [1] https://scitechdaily.com/dark-matter-may-not-exist-
| these-phy...
| tsol wrote:
| Interesting, but if we have a hard time keeping this one
| habitable we'll likely have a much harder time traveling 100
| lightyears and terraforming this one to be organic. It's fun to
| think about but we're centuries from such capabilities(if
| possible at all)
| [deleted]
| Nanana909 wrote:
| Amazing. Fantastic research continually coming out of ESO. Had
| the opportunity to chat with someone involved (not on this
| project). Super talented.
|
| Wondering what the follow up opportunities to study this more are
| coming up.
| dvh wrote:
| Isn't parent star flare star stripping atmosphere from any planet
| in habitable zone?
| alecfreudenberg wrote:
| speculoo 2: electric boogaloo
| rdevsrex wrote:
| It would be great if one day we could visit planets such as
| these, even if just with robots.
|
| I mean, the ethics of commiting your descendants to life aboard a
| generational ship is very sketchy.
| dzonga wrote:
| I would gladly take a one way trip to one of these planets.
| provided I have a way of reaching there and spending at least 1
| day alive there. 100 light years is no joke - but if the math
| on this is correct
| https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/612645/does-spec...
|
| I can leave say when i'm 60 and hopefully reach star at age 70.
| Trade-off I'm willing to do
| holoduke wrote:
| Yes with a 1g rocket you can travel millions of light years
| in less than 80 years, when you come back earth is millions
| year older. In the future people will only live a billion
| years from now.
| a1pulley wrote:
| Ethics have a cultural and temporal context: if you believe
| strongly enough in the expansionary imperative of humanity, you
| would gift the generational ship's inhabitants with a suitable
| religion.
| douglaswlance wrote:
| It's possible store billions of humans as embryos that are
| grown and raised by robotic parents upon arrival. And it should
| also be possible to genetically engineer those humans to be
| better suited to that new planet's environment.
|
| Though, by the time we figure out how to do that, "we" probably
| won't be purely biological, naturally evolved beings any
| longer.
| scotty79 wrote:
| It's really hard to imagine earthlike planet without vegetation.
| Deserts would look the same. But how would temperate zone look
| with soil and rocks and streams and lakes but zero plants.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| > Deserts would look the same.
|
| I don't think this is 100% the case. Most deserts on Earth
| actually have a relatively large variety of life in them --
| even the most desiccated deserts will often have at least
| bacteria of some sort living in them.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| So, they would basically look the same when looking at them
| through my space suit helmet.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| As it's so much closer to the star, doesn't it mean it is much
| more seismic?
| ncmncm wrote:
| Probably. And certainly tidally locked, so 1 year = 1 day, with
| a permanently boiling day side, a hard-frozen night side, and a
| temperate, twilit ring straddling them.
|
| All moisture would naturally migrate to the dark side and
| freeze there, permanently, if it doesn't sublimate away into
| the vacuum left after all the air is blasted off the day side.
| the8472 wrote:
| Even a tidally locked body can still liberate (as the moon
| does) so the terminator would at least move around over some
| fraction of the surface. Maybe together with a dense
| atmosphere that could be enough to redistribute the heat and
| keep the dark side from freezing out the gases?
| boredumb wrote:
| Ice mining is honest work.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| For robots.
| somedude895 wrote:
| > temperate, twilit ring straddling them.
|
| That sounds like a cool sci fi setting
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
| from a few years ago has this exact premise. It was
| nominated for a Hugo - I thought it was just OK.
| jkestner wrote:
| 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson has a city on Mercury that
| stays at twilight on the terminator, but being on a
| rotating planet, it has to keep moving on a massive track.
| Until it doesn't.
| kemayo wrote:
| Throwing something older than the sibling comments onto
| this: Jack of Shadows by Roger Zelazny (1971).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_of_Shadows
| [deleted]
| Majestic121 wrote:
| Solar power production on the day side would give amazing
| efficiency, except for maintenance hell maybe.
|
| I wonder if we could extract energy in other ways, like using
| the cold side for data centers (cheaper AC), or large pipes
| to extract the moisture from the cold side and heat it in the
| day side, to generate energy.
| ncmncm wrote:
| You can stand up a thermoelectric panel exactly at the
| terminator, and collect energy by transferring heat from
| its day to its night side. The night side would be
| radiating to -270 degrees Celsius, warmed only by whatever
| convective air is around.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| I always day dreamed of a way to extract energy from the
| heat gradient between cold and dark sides. Possibly a huge
| pipe with a heat exchanging fluid at higher latitudes.
|
| But with the prices on solar in recent years, I think
| that's mostly discarded.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Those are local prices. You're forgetting about the
| expense of shipping, and I'm guessing the last mile
| problem in that particular set of logistics is a big one.
| Finding skilled laborers in local manufacturing might
| also be pretty expensive, so offshoring will be much more
| favorable even with the higher shipping fees.
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