Earth 1 g with 101.325 kPa surface pressure, escape 11.186 km/s
Venus 0.9 g with 9.2 MPa surface pressure (92 Earth atmospheres) escape 10.36 km/s
Titan 0.14 g with 146.7 kPa surface pressure (1.41 Earth atmospheres) escape 2.639 km/s
The Impossible Planet
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Venus 0.9 g with 9.2 MPa surface pressure (92 Earth atmospheres) escape 10.36 km/s
Titan 0.14 g with 146.7 kPa surface pressure (1.41 Earth atmospheres) escape 2.639 km/s
GG 140 - Lecture 2 - Retaining an Atmosphere | Open Yale Courses
atmosphere - A universal formula to predict which gas can or cannot stay within bound of a natural satellite or planet? - Worldbuilding Stack Exchange
ETA: The figure shows which gases a planet or satellite can retain depending on its escape velocity and the expected temperature due to solar input alone. The gas giants can hold onto all gases and the ice giants might lose a little hydrogen slowly, whereas the Earth loses hydrogen and helium and a little water vapour. Mars loses H2, He, H2O, NH3, and CH4 but retains CO2 and Xe - it presumably had little or no N2 or O2 to begin with. The Moon just hangs onto Xe and heavier atomic/molecular weight gases. The speed of atmospheric loss is influenced by the atomic/molecular velocity distribution relative to escape velocity and whether a body is shielded from the solar wind by an intrinsic magnetic field. The figure suggests that Titan shouldn't be able to hold onto its methane but the rate of loss is probably slowed due to the low temperature and much of the methane being in liquid form. All planets and satellites would lose their atmospheres eventually given enough time. Replenishment by outgassing is not factored in.
atmosphere - A universal formula to predict which gas can or cannot stay within bound of a natural satellite or planet? - Worldbuilding Stack Exchange
ETA: The figure shows which gases a planet or satellite can retain depending on its escape velocity and the expected temperature due to solar input alone. The gas giants can hold onto all gases and the ice giants might lose a little hydrogen slowly, whereas the Earth loses hydrogen and helium and a little water vapour. Mars loses H2, He, H2O, NH3, and CH4 but retains CO2 and Xe - it presumably had little or no N2 or O2 to begin with. The Moon just hangs onto Xe and heavier atomic/molecular weight gases. The speed of atmospheric loss is influenced by the atomic/molecular velocity distribution relative to escape velocity and whether a body is shielded from the solar wind by an intrinsic magnetic field. The figure suggests that Titan shouldn't be able to hold onto its methane but the rate of loss is probably slowed due to the low temperature and much of the methane being in liquid form. All planets and satellites would lose their atmospheres eventually given enough time. Replenishment by outgassing is not factored in.
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Just as well, as I'd be surprised if there was any actual data on this.
Yeah, we have limited data at best. For example, methane is detected on Mars but we don't know if its origin is biological or geological. Vulcanism, cryovulcanism, and ice geysers are active or have been active relatively recently on quite a number of bodies in the solar system.
"This planet will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim!"
Martian cows.
Using cow tools!
Red milk? Aunt Beru's not going to be happy.
I keep hearing, "The impossible has happened," in Kirk's voice, every time I see this thread.
Now I think it might be a bit more easy to inflate asteroids into bubbles….maybe foamed up pumice interiors. Do a search on “shell worlds.” Dyson Bubbles, statites at nextbigfuture. The Globus Cassus concept is of interest.
SEEKER had an article that asked “COULD WE CREATE A LIVABLE ATMOSPHERE ON THE MOON?”
SEEKER had an article that asked “COULD WE CREATE A LIVABLE ATMOSPHERE ON THE MOON?”
Just food for thought—orthodox astrophysics views stars as isolated bodies of gas compressing under their own self-gravity until fusion ignites in the core. Assuming this is the case, then concepts like Dyson spheres and statites wholly or partially enclosing a star to capture all its radiated energy make sense.
However, there is an alternative model called plasma cosmology which views the universe as electrically-driven by massive "Birkeland currents" interconnecting everything. If the idea is totally new to you, it will sound absurd when stated so baldly. But there are abundant books on the subject and many on-line resources. (The best "primer," in my opinion is Donald Scott's The Electric Sky, https://www.stickmanonstone.com/shop/p/electricsky )
Assuming such a universe, a Dyson sphere would be absolutely pointless and perhaps even foolhardy. The enclosed star would snuff out, having been cut off from the rest of its circuit, like a component on a PC board with its traces cut. Would that current then re-form on the outer surface of the Dyson sphere? Heck, even a "space elevator" might be a dangerous undertaking, an exercise left for the student.
Anyway, Star Trek takes place in a universe resembling the orthodox model with the more fantastic speculations thrown in. For those fiction writers on the forum, plasma cosmology might serve as an exotic location, its potential to be explored (if you'll pardon the pun).
FYI—Star Trek's "barrier" at the edge of the galaxy sounds remarkably like something out of plasma cosmology.
There isn't much evidence in support of plasma cosmology, and there is a lot of evidence against it.
For some, "electric universe" covers a much broader scope than "plasma cosmology." Some interests may be "riding on the coattails" of plasma cosmology to give their assertions borrowed respectability. That said, I don't know of any "electric universe" proponents who suggest that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. That's olde tyme Bible stuff.
"Fusion didn't happen"? I don't know anyone saying that. Some electric sun models posit fusion on the surface, instead of the deep interior. And a completed project called SAFIRE confirmed one electric sun model. Perhaps you meant "the Big Bang didn't happen"? Anyone still wedded to that theory hasn't done any reading since the '80s. Those who say there is no evidence for plasma cosmology and lots of evidence against it probably tell everyone that Linux is hard to use, and everything must be done through a command line terminal.
I'm not here to convert anyone. Those truly interested will find abundant material on the subject, including published papers, mathematical models, etc. I mentioned plasma cosmology in the interests of something novel, and perhaps useful to writers. Meanwhile, people blithely accept the idea of "warped space."
(I had to link to an archived page as Dr. Edward Dowdye died in 2020, and his Web site lapsed. Check the observations: none of the bending starlight predicted by Einsteinian Relativity, except through the plasma atmosphere of the Sun. In short, the bending is a refraction effect, like a spoon standing in a glass of water.)
Comets not having water is a real claim, and abundantly supported by many cometary missions, including the Rosetta mission to 67P. The Philae lander had anchors designed for ice, but bounced off the desiccated rock they found. And the lander tumbled over the surface. So what's the deal with "water" found by spectroscope?
Since comets have extreme orbits, they move rapidly through the Sun's electric field, too fast to discharge in a more sedate manner. So they discharge in a spectacular way known as sputtering in industry. The silicates of the comet, which contain abundant oxygen, are burned off. (There are photos showing this erosion on repeat visits.) That oxygen combines with hydrogen from the Sun, thus forming "water" (hydroxyls) in the coma. That is why "water" is seen spectrographically, but is not found directly on comets.
(By the way, there are "asteroids" in the belt which develop comet-like comas, despite a much more circular orbit.)
With any theory eccentric to the norm, there are going to the usual gaggle of morons. But as far as fusion goes, the serious researchers most certainly do accept nuclear fusion in a plasma cosmology. It's kind of central to some of the concepts.
Eric Lerner of the "The Big Bang Never happened" book (and Selma marcher) is the head of the Lawrenceville Plasma Physics project, which until very recently had made the highest temperature plasmoids recorded (that may number may have been taken by Helion last year. Murky). I'm not an astrophysicist. I have no hat in the ring, and I wouldn't know what the hat looked like when it was tossed in the ring, but they do offer some interesting counterpoints. Black holes, for instance, should not technically exist right now, rather the collapsed singularities predicted should be in a continual never-ending state of becoming one as time dilates to infinity. The arguement is made that it would be a black hole to the observer ,but this is an unfalsifiable statement, for obvious reasons. Whereas the electric-universe concept of collapsed stars becoming dense plasma toroids is ultimately verifiable. The theory is either right, or wrong, and doesn't depend on some of the near religious hypotheticals of the standard model, or the Bohr-ian "Shut up and calculate" mentality that led to it becoming something of a closed discipline.
If I am not mistaken, gravity likewise can't entirely account the truly large superclusters observed in the universe. In plasma cosmology, this is something predicted.
I can't tie this very well to Star Trek, except uh the amount of plasma generation required to make Trek ships run seems to fit in better with Plasma Cosmology than in the current expanding universe model. There.
Yes, it was a planet so unusuall that it was considered impossible to have formed naturally, and so Losira ocnfirmed what the characters speculated about and what some viewers would have speculated about. But Kalandans can only construct objects which can possibly exist. They cannot build an object which is scientificially possible.
The Kalandans can't make anything physically impossible, no matter how advanced their science and technology is. It is clear that the planet is so strange it would be impossible (or very, very, very, very close to impossible) for it to form naturally. An artifically constructed planet could be built a lot differently than any naturally forming planet. But even an artificially built planet has to be within the limits of the physically, scientifically possible.
For example, the most massive stars in the universe have more than 100 times the mass of the Sun.
The more massive a star, the more its gravity pulls on its matter, compressing it more and more and increasing the heat and pressure at is core. When the heat and pressure become great enough in the core, hygrogen will start fusing to form helium, releasing energy to expand the plasma in the core and balance the pull of gravity.
Once a star has used up all its fusionable fuel to produce energy, and lost much or most of its original mass, it can't stop contracting under the pull of gravity, until it becomes a white dwarf made of degernate matter or a neutron star where all the protons and electons have been forced together to make neutrons.
If a collapsing white dwarf has too much mass, it won't stop collapsing until it becomes a neutron star, and if a neutron star has more than about 1.5 to 3.0 times the mass of the Sun, it will not stop as a neutron star but keep on collapsing until it becomes a stellar mass black hole.
It has been claculated that if a forming star achieves a mass of 120 Suns, it will shine so brightly that its light pressure will force away infalling matter. If a star reaches a mass of 150 Suns, itt should blow away its outer layers, making it much less mssive. And there seem to be just a few known stars which are somewhat above those calculated theoretical limits, up to a mass of 250 Suns.
So suppose there was a star with the mass of 10,000 Suns, made of hydrogen and other elements which can fuse to produce energy. The enormous pressures inside it would produce some buch energy it would blow itself away. And suppose there was a star with a mass of 10,000 suns which was made of elements heavier than iron, which can't produce energy by fusing. Nothing could stop the star from collapsing into a black hole with the mass of 10,000 Suns.
Nobody can build a star with the mass of 10,000 Suns, because it would eather blow itself apart or collapse into a black hole at a much smaller mass while still being assembled.
So could the Kalandan Outpost Planet (K.O.P. for short) be constructed, or would it be impossible to construct?
In my post number 2 on this thread I constructed a number of models of K.O.P.
The one I prefer is that when Kirk heard that the K.O.P. had a radius of approximately 3,474.8 kiometers (2,351.765 miles), which is the diameter, not radius, of the Moon, Kirk confused the diameter and radius of he Moon and said that the K.O.P. was approximately the same size as the Moon, when it actually had twice the radius & 8 times the volume. And if the K.O.P. had half the mass of Earth, Spock might still say that it had a mass similar to that of Earth considering how vast the diferencs in the masses of astronomical objects, from the tiniest dust mote to a supergiant black hole, are.
So my calculation showed that if the K.O.P. had twice the radius of the Moon, and half the mass of the Earth, which was about as far as I thought it was reasonable to go in interpreting Kirk and Spock's statements to make the K.O.P. more plausible, it would have a density of 16.993018 gm/cm3 (3.081795 times that of Earth), a surface gravity of 9.80665 meters per second persecond (1.689 g), and an escape velocity of 10.71 km/s (0.957 that of Earth)..
An escape velocity of 10.71 kilometers per second should be more than enough to retain a breathable atmosphere of oxygen. But a surface gravity 1.689 times that of Earth would be something that humans would probably not tolerate on any world they would colonize. Walking around on the surface of a world with 1.689 g surface gravity for a few minutes, hours, or days, would not be as bad, but it would become more and more stressful as time passed. Fortunately starship crews are probably healthy and trained and fit, and possibly McCoy had pills that made them more resistant to the high gravity.
I image that the K.O.P. would have had a central region filled solid with very dense matter almost up to the surface. And maybe on top of that there was an almost empty space, perhaps kilometers tall, with metal columns supporting floor after floor extending all the way around the planet, and thus having a total surface area equal to even the largest habitable planet. That area could be fitted with living quarters for as many Kalandans as might come to the planet.
And above that layer for potential habitation, or resting directly on the central mass if there wasn't any such layer, there would be a layer of diburium-osmium alloy that might be a few meters thick or maybe a few kilometers thick, as a protective layer. And above it was the layer of soil with plants, and scattered rocks imported from other worlds (or maybe imitation rocks). And above that the atmosphere.
So what was the inner region of the planet, which had most of its mass, made of?
With a density of 16.993018 grams per cubic centimeter, there would be only a few possible elements that would be dense enough, and they would all be very rare in the universe, so the Kalandans would have had to bring them from other star systems, or maybe create them from other and more common elements by atomic transmutation.
Elements almost dense enough for the overall density of K.O.P. are Callfornium, Protactinium, and Tantalum at 15.10, 15.37, and 16.654. Perhaps they would be compressed at the center of K.O.P. to make the overall density high enough.
Elements with higher densities than 16.993018 grams per cubic centimeter include Uranium 18.95, Tungsten 19.25, Gold, 19.282, Rhenium 21.02, Platinum 21.46, Iridium, 22.56, and Osmium 22.59.
There are a number of other elements with higher densities that are highly radioactive and have very short half lives, and so are not found in nature but have to be created in labatoraties.
The longest half life of any isotope of Neptunium (density 20.25) is over 200,000 years. The longist half life of any isotope of Plutonium (density 19.84) is about 80 million years. Many other isotopes of these elments have much shorter ilifetimes.
Depending on how long the Kalandans wanted their outpost planet to last, maybe Neptunium or Plutonium would have been acceptable as a material, but they wouldn't have been any denser than the nonradioactive and stable elements Rhenium, Platinum, Iridium, and Osmium.
The elements much denser than K.O.P.'s density of 16.993018 grams per cubic centimeter would have to be diluted by elements of leser density to bring the overall desnity of the world down. I suggest Iron, with a density of 7.874 grams per cubic centimeter, which is among the most common elements in the universe, unlike all the other elements mentioned as possible materials, which are ultra rare. I would prefer it if at least one aspect of the construction of the K.O.P. was fairly reasonable by the standards of constructing a planet.
Anyway, at least this design of the K.O.P could be constructed out of a few of the known elements.
I made this rough design of the K.O.P. by making its radius as much larger than the Moon's as I considered reasonably consistent with Kirk's words, and the mass as much lower than EArth's mass as I considered reasonably consistent with Spock's words. And even so the surface gravity of the world turns out to be near the limit of human endurance for a period of half a day, and its extreme density severely limits its possible materials to a few very rare elements.
In my post number 2 above I mentioned a few other possible designs for the .K.O.P. They all either stretch Kirk's and Spock's words beyond what I consider acceptable, or else have much higher surface gravities. and much higher densities.
So that is my opinion about the designof the artifical K.O.P.
And if anyone wants to suggest alternate designs of the K.O.P. go ahead.
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