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Need help creating a sci-fi world: Calling all geologists and planetologists!
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<blockquote data-quote="Wrath of the Swarm" data-source="post: 1559619" data-attributes="member: 16402"><p>Stealing a page from Diane Duane's <u>Spock's World</u>, perhaps this planet was once much more hospitable to life, but a burst of unusual solar activity stripped the planet of much of its water.</p><p></p><p>On our world, water is often split into hydrogen and oxygen high in the upper atmosphere, and the lighter hydrogen is sometimes lost to space. As a result, Earth is slowly becoming drier and drier. In fact, it's thought that life on Earth will be lost due to insufficient water much earlier than the Sun will cool sufficiently to swallow it.</p><p></p><p>In the history Duane envisioned for Vulcan, the planet's primary became hyperactive for a brief period tens of thousands of years ago when its fusion reactions destabilized. The sudden burst of light and heat destroyed much of the planet's life and stripped away much of the atmosphere and water. As a result, the formerly lush and verdent planet that was mostly covered by warm, shallow oceans became a parched world with a thin atmosphere. There were rare lakes and a few seas as large as our Mediterranean, but most of Vulcan grew to resemble the more unpleasant parts of America's southwestern deserts - a vast stony wasteland where rain fell rarely and water was the most important necessity for life. A cool spring's day could be well into the 90's, and a hot day could be 140 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. Due to the lack of cloud cover that would help keep in heat, nights could be bitterly cold.</p><p></p><p>That's a fairly plausible mechanism by which a planet could come to have mostly desert conditions yet still have developed life. There are of course other ways - for example, Mars seems to have been a wet and relatively warm place once, but it's barren now. It's been a staple of science fiction and has become somewhat of a cliche, so perhaps a Mars-like world isn't what you're looking for, though.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Wrath of the Swarm, post: 1559619, member: 16402"] Stealing a page from Diane Duane's [u]Spock's World[/u], perhaps this planet was once much more hospitable to life, but a burst of unusual solar activity stripped the planet of much of its water. On our world, water is often split into hydrogen and oxygen high in the upper atmosphere, and the lighter hydrogen is sometimes lost to space. As a result, Earth is slowly becoming drier and drier. In fact, it's thought that life on Earth will be lost due to insufficient water much earlier than the Sun will cool sufficiently to swallow it. In the history Duane envisioned for Vulcan, the planet's primary became hyperactive for a brief period tens of thousands of years ago when its fusion reactions destabilized. The sudden burst of light and heat destroyed much of the planet's life and stripped away much of the atmosphere and water. As a result, the formerly lush and verdent planet that was mostly covered by warm, shallow oceans became a parched world with a thin atmosphere. There were rare lakes and a few seas as large as our Mediterranean, but most of Vulcan grew to resemble the more unpleasant parts of America's southwestern deserts - a vast stony wasteland where rain fell rarely and water was the most important necessity for life. A cool spring's day could be well into the 90's, and a hot day could be 140 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. Due to the lack of cloud cover that would help keep in heat, nights could be bitterly cold. That's a fairly plausible mechanism by which a planet could come to have mostly desert conditions yet still have developed life. There are of course other ways - for example, Mars seems to have been a wet and relatively warm place once, but it's barren now. It's been a staple of science fiction and has become somewhat of a cliche, so perhaps a Mars-like world isn't what you're looking for, though. [/QUOTE]
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