In fairness, seasons and varied terrain aren’t guaranteed.
Of all the bodies in the solar system, only Earth has such a wide variety of landscape. Mars is rocky desert or rocky desert with canyons. Pluto is ice ball or rocky ice ball. Etc.
Also, if humans were colonizing earth from outside, we would probably just build cities on the river deltas and skip the less habitable spots. Stories set here would then just be cityscape or river delta, even though the ice caps/mountains/jungles/deserts still exist. Colonized worlds will have different population distribution that organically settled ones.
The Kepler program found a lot of exoplanets and has categorized them generally as Hot Jupiters, Cold Gas Giants, Ocean Worlds & Ice Giants, Rocky Planets and Lava Worlds.
If you ignore the gas giants because there’s no surface to land on, rocky planets (and maybe desert planets) would be extremely common. Water or ice planets would also be incredibly common. And, if you’re really unlucky, you might end up on a lava planet – one that’s small and very close to its sun.
What wouldn’t be common are things like an entire planet that’s a swamp, or an entire planet that’s a forest of Earth-style trees. I’m sure it’s entirely possible that on some planet there’s a life-form that becomes the dominant form and that looks vaguely like Earth-style trees, but not the kind you see on a typical SciFi show filmed near Vancouver.
Mars is rocky desert or rocky desert with canyons.
Mars has river deltas. It has flat plains. It has shifting rolling dunes. It has mountains and valley. It has a twisting series of canyons so constricted they’re called the Labyrinth of Night. It has vast ice sheets and polar caps of frozen carbon dioxide and water. It has caves and frozen mud flats and a thousand other varied forms.
Mars is a world. It is a place. It has biomes as varied and unique as those of Earth.
Pluto is ice ball or rocky ice ball.
There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Mars may have “river deltas”, but without the river.
Mars is a world. It is a place. It has biomes as varied and unique as those of Earth.
Suuure. A biome is a geographical region with a specific climate, flora and fauna. Mars doesn’t have much climate because it has very little atmosphere, and it has no flora or fauna. There’s no way in hell that it has biomes as varied as earth.
They are more subtle, but they are there. And it does have an atmosphere. It’s substantial enough that communication to the surface can be lost for months due to planet-spanning dust storms. Yes, it’s only 1% the pressure of Earth’s at the surface, but that’s enough, especially when you allow forces to act over geological time scales.
And yes, they can be as varied as those on Earth. Life doesn’t actually increase the biome variety as much as you think it does. The kind of life you get in any given biome on Earth is a direct function of the geology and climate in the area. Input a given altitude, rainfall, temperature, and soil conditions, and you’ll get a similar biome anywhere on Earth. Yes, there are different individual species in the rain forests of South America vs the rain forests of Africa, but they’re both rain forests. They work as biomes in similar ways. Wherever the local climate and geology support rain forests, rain forests sprout up. The only exception is isolated islands that can’t be reached by certain species.
This is why Mars can have the same biome diversity as Earth. The living components of Earth’s biomes are a direct mapping to the nonliving components. Earth’s living biomes are no more diverse than the underlying geology and climate.
And this is before we even consider Martian life forms, which almost certainly exist. We know of bacteria that exist deep in the Earth’s crust that, if you transported them to deep under the Martian surface, would be able to survive and thrive just fine with zero modification. We know Mars used to have vast oceans and all the ingredients necessary to get life started. And we’ve seen numerous bits of circumstantial evidence of bacterial life present in some capacity on Mars today. While scientists are loathe to affirmatively proclaim life on Mars. The extant existence of bacterial life on Mars today really isn’t that an unusual claim. If life could get started on Earth, there’s no reason to believe it couldn’t have started on Mars. And that’s before you consider pansperia. If nothing else, we know life can comfortably exist deep in the planet’s crust. And who knows how such life might affect conditions on the surface.
Honestly, by the numbers, Earth is mostly an ocean/forest planet with some desert. Desert and ice planets are believable, too, given those are more temperature-based, and city planets seem like they’d be inevitable in a sci-fi setting just due to population sizes.
By the numbers I think it’s an ocean planet with 71% coverage. Of the land, it’s actually pretty evenly split 1/3 forest, 1/3 desert, 1/3 grass or shrubland.
Given what we know of the Earth’s own history, forest planets, ice planets, and desert planets are all possible and the Earth has been each in different geologic times. Although in every case there will be pockets of other biomes that are very large on a human scale. A single France-sized forest would be massive to a human explorer, even if the rest of the planet is ocean and ice.
In fairness, seasons and varied terrain aren’t guaranteed.
Of all the bodies in the solar system, only Earth has such a wide variety of landscape. Mars is rocky desert or rocky desert with canyons. Pluto is ice ball or rocky ice ball. Etc.
Also, if humans were colonizing earth from outside, we would probably just build cities on the river deltas and skip the less habitable spots. Stories set here would then just be cityscape or river delta, even though the ice caps/mountains/jungles/deserts still exist. Colonized worlds will have different population distribution that organically settled ones.
Some Sci-Fi planet types are reasonable.
The Kepler program found a lot of exoplanets and has categorized them generally as Hot Jupiters, Cold Gas Giants, Ocean Worlds & Ice Giants, Rocky Planets and Lava Worlds.
If you ignore the gas giants because there’s no surface to land on, rocky planets (and maybe desert planets) would be extremely common. Water or ice planets would also be incredibly common. And, if you’re really unlucky, you might end up on a lava planet – one that’s small and very close to its sun.
What wouldn’t be common are things like an entire planet that’s a swamp, or an entire planet that’s a forest of Earth-style trees. I’m sure it’s entirely possible that on some planet there’s a life-form that becomes the dominant form and that looks vaguely like Earth-style trees, but not the kind you see on a typical SciFi show filmed near Vancouver.
Hey now. You can land on the surface of Jupiter if you’re dense enough.
Metallic hydrogen sounds so cool.
Mars has river deltas. It has flat plains. It has shifting rolling dunes. It has mountains and valley. It has a twisting series of canyons so constricted they’re called the Labyrinth of Night. It has vast ice sheets and polar caps of frozen carbon dioxide and water. It has caves and frozen mud flats and a thousand other varied forms.
Mars is a world. It is a place. It has biomes as varied and unique as those of Earth.
There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Well, not exactly biomes. That one it doesn’t have.
Mars may have “river deltas”, but without the river.
Suuure. A biome is a geographical region with a specific climate, flora and fauna. Mars doesn’t have much climate because it has very little atmosphere, and it has no flora or fauna. There’s no way in hell that it has biomes as varied as earth.
They are more subtle, but they are there. And it does have an atmosphere. It’s substantial enough that communication to the surface can be lost for months due to planet-spanning dust storms. Yes, it’s only 1% the pressure of Earth’s at the surface, but that’s enough, especially when you allow forces to act over geological time scales.
And yes, they can be as varied as those on Earth. Life doesn’t actually increase the biome variety as much as you think it does. The kind of life you get in any given biome on Earth is a direct function of the geology and climate in the area. Input a given altitude, rainfall, temperature, and soil conditions, and you’ll get a similar biome anywhere on Earth. Yes, there are different individual species in the rain forests of South America vs the rain forests of Africa, but they’re both rain forests. They work as biomes in similar ways. Wherever the local climate and geology support rain forests, rain forests sprout up. The only exception is isolated islands that can’t be reached by certain species.
This is why Mars can have the same biome diversity as Earth. The living components of Earth’s biomes are a direct mapping to the nonliving components. Earth’s living biomes are no more diverse than the underlying geology and climate.
And this is before we even consider Martian life forms, which almost certainly exist. We know of bacteria that exist deep in the Earth’s crust that, if you transported them to deep under the Martian surface, would be able to survive and thrive just fine with zero modification. We know Mars used to have vast oceans and all the ingredients necessary to get life started. And we’ve seen numerous bits of circumstantial evidence of bacterial life present in some capacity on Mars today. While scientists are loathe to affirmatively proclaim life on Mars. The extant existence of bacterial life on Mars today really isn’t that an unusual claim. If life could get started on Earth, there’s no reason to believe it couldn’t have started on Mars. And that’s before you consider pansperia. If nothing else, we know life can comfortably exist deep in the planet’s crust. And who knows how such life might affect conditions on the surface.
Mars has no biomes because Mars has no known life. You can’t skip the “bio” part of the word.
It might have had biomes in the past, but that’s a different discussion. There’s no evidence of life currently existing on Mars.
Honestly, by the numbers, Earth is mostly an ocean/forest planet with some desert. Desert and ice planets are believable, too, given those are more temperature-based, and city planets seem like they’d be inevitable in a sci-fi setting just due to population sizes.
By the numbers I think it’s an ocean planet with 71% coverage. Of the land, it’s actually pretty evenly split 1/3 forest, 1/3 desert, 1/3 grass or shrubland.
Given what we know of the Earth’s own history, forest planets, ice planets, and desert planets are all possible and the Earth has been each in different geologic times. Although in every case there will be pockets of other biomes that are very large on a human scale. A single France-sized forest would be massive to a human explorer, even if the rest of the planet is ocean and ice.
This guy biomes.
Yeah, plus NMS has come a really really long way since release and they haven’t ever asked for another dime.
Which is why I’ve purchased it twice. Love that game and want to support great devs.