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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • My guess is that a rocky planet that is 5% - 95% covered with ocean is probably pretty rare. You probably mostly either get water / ice planets or rock planets.

    Another thing that makes Earth unique is the liquid iron core. Without that you don’t get a magnetic field. Without a magnetic field, it’s hard to keep the atmosphere intact. That means that water vapour gets blown off over time, which eventually results on a dry planet like Mars.

    As for all 3 states of water, as long as you’re in the range to have a wet surface, you’ll probably get all 3 states of water. The poles will get a lot less solar radiation than the equator, so if the equator is wet it’s pretty likely that you’ll get at least a bit of ice at the poles. If there’s a lot of water then it’s easy to get water vapour. Even Europa which has an average surface temperature of -171C (102K) has a liquid water ocean under the icy surface, and although its atmosphere is extremely thin, part of it is water vapour.


  • 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.

    Exoplanet types with major types "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 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.