Dune: desert planet. Endor: forest moon. Science fiction is full of planets with only one biome. Why is a habitable ocean planet feasible but a desert planet isn’t? Come and discuss planetary ecologies of fiction, as informed by the biomes on the planet we know...
G. David Nordley: writer, physicist, astronautical engineering consultant; Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society; American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Emma Johanna Puranen: writing bridges astronomy, statistics, and media studies, studies fictional exoplanets, and the ongoing dialogue between scientists and science fiction writers; how has real exoplanets impacted the way writers world build
Julie Nováková: Czech author in Clarkesworld, Asimov's, Analog
Phoebe Barton: writer in Analog, On Spec, Lightspeed; history of science fiction
Valentin D. Ivanov: Bulgarian astronomer; dynamics of star clusters, formation of stars, brown dwarfs, and exoplanets around such objects; helped develop idea of planemos planetary-mass objects which are massive enough but do not become stars
Every summer for the past 25 years, I’ve taught a class to gifted and talented young people called ALIEN WORLDS. As a retired science teacher (from elementary through high school, I have taught every (school) science from Astronomy to Zoology!), I teach my alien worlds class STRICTLY from a science point of view of science. For example, when the students create their “alien intelligence”, they have to not only be part of the ecology of the world they make, but ALSO, they have to have descended from a primitive form of life which still exists on the planet.
As I DO teach fourth graders through high school sophomores, I can, in one week, only touch on the rudimentary rules of evolution. BUT, most of the kids get it.
As well, prior to allowing the evolution of life on their alien worlds, they have to HAVE an alien world! A Power Point slide I leave up and come back to several times during the all-day, week-long class is this: “NO FOREST MOONS OF ENDOR, DESERT PLANETS OF JAKKU, JUNGLE PLANETS OF DAGOBA, OR ICE PLANETS OF HOTH!!!!!” I don’t even allow the World City of Trantor…um…I mean CORRUSCANT…
I spend time teaching that no single world will have (in fact, I use that rarely-used word, “impossible” a single biome and that George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg have led them wrong (ever since I seeing STAR WARS during its opening week, in the theater, in 1977…I was a newly-turned 20 years old and had just finished two years at a Lutheran junior college – where the two biology professors taught evolution!!!)
The likely phenomenon that all planets will have multiple biomes is apparently what this session is all about.
BUT, it was the rider that intrigued me: Why is a habitable ocean planet feasible but a desert planet isn’t?
My off-the-cuff answer is that an ocean world can’t NOT have variable biomes. As well, water and air have totally different properties. Perhaps the most important is that when air is heated, the heat dissipates fairly quickly – living in Minnesota, we see this obviously after an excessively hot day (Minnesota’s highest recorded temperature was 115 deg. F on July 29, 1917 in a town named Beardsley (one of the western-most points of the state (in the “bump”) cools off dramatically. Once the sun is down, as long as the humidity isn’t excessive, the temperature drops fairly quickly.
This is NOT the truth for water. In addition to being on the edge of the Great Plains with wild temperature swings (record: 72 degrees F, 1970); a portion of our border is the shore of Lake Superior. Superior contains 10% of Earth’s surface fresh water; that mass of water (along with the other Great Lakes) “…acts like a heat sink that moderates the temperatures of the surrounding land, cooling the summers and warming the winters. The lakes also act like giant humidifiers, increasing the moisture content of the air. In the winter, this moisture contributes to heavy snowfall known as “lake effect” snow.”
Even strictly speaking, Humans and all other land life is confined to only 25% of the surface of the planet – practically speaking, Earth already IS a water planet. If you want to get REALLY picky about, all life starts in water of varying viscosity – I had an amniotic sack around me until just before my mom “broke water”. I scramble a good half dozen water sacks for birds every week…
At any rate, the response to why you can’t have a world that’s entirely desert – is that CHEMISTRY NEEDS WATER TO HAPPEN.
And if you raise the flag of Arrakis at me, I’ll just drop a rock on it – Arrakis is no more a “desert world” than Sahara is a dry desert – the sand may be dry, but try as you might, you can’t eliminate the fact that Sahara exists on a planet that is 71% WATER…and while we all pretend that there’s no water on Dune – there IS water on Dune. It’s how the Fremen survive – and water has to come from the HUMAN component of Dune in order for the still suits to work…
Minimal water on Dune – absolutely. But except for some very rare cases, I doubt life could have evolved there. The fact Shai Hulud is made of flesh and not rock is proof that Dune has water and while water isn’t ABUNDANT, it is there – proving that you can’t have a totally dry planet.
All planets are water planets. H2O is essential for the activity of cells as we know them. ANDROMEDA STRAIN aside, life as we know it has water in it in some amount.
THAT’S why you can have all-water worlds, and a true, totally dry desert world would be impossible.
Oh, a quibble that bothers me every time I watch it? In Episode VI: The Empire Strikes Back? Hoth CAN’T BE AN ICE MOON/PLANET/WHATEVER: Seventy-one percent of the oxygen we breathe comes from algae IN THE OCEAN. Twenty percent more comes from Prochlorococcus, a cyanobacterium, or a blue green bacteria – so there’s 91% of the oxygen comes from…plants in water. The rest? Soil and rocks, plus atmospheric free oxygen created through radiation and occasionally lightning.
SO: you CAN have a life-bearing oceanic world (you live on one); but you CAN’T have a life-bearing desert one…
The rest of those alien worlds would have to be somewhere in between – dryer or wetter than Earth; and maybe with LOTS of deserts (and there you’d have to define your TYPE of desert – some are cold, some hot, some are Antarctic, and some are Sahara. And you have the driest place on this planet: “The Atacama (west of the Andes on the coast of Bolivia) is the driest place on earth, other than the poles. It receives less than 1 mm of precipitation each year, and some areas haven’t seen a drop of rain in more than 500 years.”
You know, I don’t think I’m done with this whole planet thing...Later!
Program Guide: https://chicon.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/PocketProgram-5s.pdf
Image: https://i0.wp.com/chicon.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/chicon2022-logo-1.png?fit=640%2C365&ssl=1
Emma Johanna Puranen: writing bridges astronomy, statistics, and media studies, studies fictional exoplanets, and the ongoing dialogue between scientists and science fiction writers; how has real exoplanets impacted the way writers world build
Julie Nováková: Czech author in Clarkesworld, Asimov's, Analog
Phoebe Barton: writer in Analog, On Spec, Lightspeed; history of science fiction
Valentin D. Ivanov: Bulgarian astronomer; dynamics of star clusters, formation of stars, brown dwarfs, and exoplanets around such objects; helped develop idea of planemos planetary-mass objects which are massive enough but do not become stars
Every summer for the past 25 years, I’ve taught a class to gifted and talented young people called ALIEN WORLDS. As a retired science teacher (from elementary through high school, I have taught every (school) science from Astronomy to Zoology!), I teach my alien worlds class STRICTLY from a science point of view of science. For example, when the students create their “alien intelligence”, they have to not only be part of the ecology of the world they make, but ALSO, they have to have descended from a primitive form of life which still exists on the planet.
As I DO teach fourth graders through high school sophomores, I can, in one week, only touch on the rudimentary rules of evolution. BUT, most of the kids get it.
As well, prior to allowing the evolution of life on their alien worlds, they have to HAVE an alien world! A Power Point slide I leave up and come back to several times during the all-day, week-long class is this: “NO FOREST MOONS OF ENDOR, DESERT PLANETS OF JAKKU, JUNGLE PLANETS OF DAGOBA, OR ICE PLANETS OF HOTH!!!!!” I don’t even allow the World City of Trantor…um…I mean CORRUSCANT…
I spend time teaching that no single world will have (in fact, I use that rarely-used word, “impossible” a single biome and that George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg have led them wrong (ever since I seeing STAR WARS during its opening week, in the theater, in 1977…I was a newly-turned 20 years old and had just finished two years at a Lutheran junior college – where the two biology professors taught evolution!!!)
The likely phenomenon that all planets will have multiple biomes is apparently what this session is all about.
BUT, it was the rider that intrigued me: Why is a habitable ocean planet feasible but a desert planet isn’t?
My off-the-cuff answer is that an ocean world can’t NOT have variable biomes. As well, water and air have totally different properties. Perhaps the most important is that when air is heated, the heat dissipates fairly quickly – living in Minnesota, we see this obviously after an excessively hot day (Minnesota’s highest recorded temperature was 115 deg. F on July 29, 1917 in a town named Beardsley (one of the western-most points of the state (in the “bump”) cools off dramatically. Once the sun is down, as long as the humidity isn’t excessive, the temperature drops fairly quickly.
This is NOT the truth for water. In addition to being on the edge of the Great Plains with wild temperature swings (record: 72 degrees F, 1970); a portion of our border is the shore of Lake Superior. Superior contains 10% of Earth’s surface fresh water; that mass of water (along with the other Great Lakes) “…acts like a heat sink that moderates the temperatures of the surrounding land, cooling the summers and warming the winters. The lakes also act like giant humidifiers, increasing the moisture content of the air. In the winter, this moisture contributes to heavy snowfall known as “lake effect” snow.”
Even strictly speaking, Humans and all other land life is confined to only 25% of the surface of the planet – practically speaking, Earth already IS a water planet. If you want to get REALLY picky about, all life starts in water of varying viscosity – I had an amniotic sack around me until just before my mom “broke water”. I scramble a good half dozen water sacks for birds every week…
At any rate, the response to why you can’t have a world that’s entirely desert – is that CHEMISTRY NEEDS WATER TO HAPPEN.
And if you raise the flag of Arrakis at me, I’ll just drop a rock on it – Arrakis is no more a “desert world” than Sahara is a dry desert – the sand may be dry, but try as you might, you can’t eliminate the fact that Sahara exists on a planet that is 71% WATER…and while we all pretend that there’s no water on Dune – there IS water on Dune. It’s how the Fremen survive – and water has to come from the HUMAN component of Dune in order for the still suits to work…
Minimal water on Dune – absolutely. But except for some very rare cases, I doubt life could have evolved there. The fact Shai Hulud is made of flesh and not rock is proof that Dune has water and while water isn’t ABUNDANT, it is there – proving that you can’t have a totally dry planet.
All planets are water planets. H2O is essential for the activity of cells as we know them. ANDROMEDA STRAIN aside, life as we know it has water in it in some amount.
THAT’S why you can have all-water worlds, and a true, totally dry desert world would be impossible.
Oh, a quibble that bothers me every time I watch it? In Episode VI: The Empire Strikes Back? Hoth CAN’T BE AN ICE MOON/PLANET/WHATEVER: Seventy-one percent of the oxygen we breathe comes from algae IN THE OCEAN. Twenty percent more comes from Prochlorococcus, a cyanobacterium, or a blue green bacteria – so there’s 91% of the oxygen comes from…plants in water. The rest? Soil and rocks, plus atmospheric free oxygen created through radiation and occasionally lightning.
SO: you CAN have a life-bearing oceanic world (you live on one); but you CAN’T have a life-bearing desert one…
The rest of those alien worlds would have to be somewhere in between – dryer or wetter than Earth; and maybe with LOTS of deserts (and there you’d have to define your TYPE of desert – some are cold, some hot, some are Antarctic, and some are Sahara. And you have the driest place on this planet: “The Atacama (west of the Andes on the coast of Bolivia) is the driest place on earth, other than the poles. It receives less than 1 mm of precipitation each year, and some areas haven’t seen a drop of rain in more than 500 years.”
You know, I don’t think I’m done with this whole planet thing...Later!
Program Guide: https://chicon.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/PocketProgram-5s.pdf
Image: https://i0.wp.com/chicon.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/chicon2022-logo-1.png?fit=640%2C365&ssl=1
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