Second chance planets 3: cosmic rain on dried-out worlds
Have you ever been lost in the desert?
Stumbling along the sand dunes, the Sun beating down on you, your mouth sticky and dry. All you can think about is water…
Second chance planets 2: Pre-terraformed, habitable evaporated cores of mini-Neptunes
Sometimes removing the outer atmosphere from a Neptune-like planet can reveal an ocean paradise!
Second chance planets: Iceball worlds that thaw out when their stars go red giant
A while back I wrote a series of posts called How planets die. It was about all the ways planets can be sterilized or destroyed. I even made a “planetary death scale”. Gruesome stuff. Let’s liven things up with a new mini-series on Second-Chance Planets. These are planets that get a second chance at life. …
How planets die: pulverized in a deluge of asteroids and comets!
Where would we be without the occasional asteroid crashing into the Earth?
How planets die: roasted, toasted and swallowed by their evolving stars!
Just like people, stars age. Their planets go along for the ride and are often killed or maimed in the process….
How planets die: climate catastrophe!
If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason. — Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey This series is about how planets die — it is introduced here. Earth is a cosmic freaking paradise. Just look at our neighboring planets:…
How planets die: Fried by tidal volcanoes
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, just let them go because, man, they’re gone. — Deep thoughts by Jack Handey This series is about how planets die — it is introduced here. What do you think of when you hear the word tides? Ocean waves? The Moon? Maybe sitting…
How planets die: When good Jupiters go bad
Gas giants have murdered rocky planets (or their building blocks) around ~5 billion stars in our galaxy! (Usually by dropping them onto their Suns!).
How planets die
Just like people, planets are born and they die. We know how people die. But google “how planets die” and you’ll get the wrong answer.
Can moons orbit moons? — the poem
Can moons orbit moons? wondered Juna and I.
Some planets have moons, you know, up in the sky
But none of those moons has its own moon around it.
When Juna’s son learned this he just was astounded!
