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Via Randy McDonald:
The Steppenwolf: A proposal for a habitable planet in interstellar space
The Steppenwolf: A proposal for a habitable planet in interstellar space
Rogue planets have been ejected from their planetary system. We investigate the possibility that a rogue planet could maintain a liquid ocean under layers of thermally-insulating water ice and frozen atmosphere as a result of geothermal heat flux. We find that a rogue planet of Earth-like composition and age could maintain a subglacial liquid ocean if it were ~3.5 times more massive than Earth. If a rogue planet had about ten times higher water mass fraction or a thick cryo- atmospheric layer, it would need to be only ~0.3 times the mass of Earth to maintain a liquid ocean. Such a planet could be detected from reflected solar radiation and its thermal emission could be characterized in the far-IR if it passed within O(1000) AU of Earth.
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Date: 2011-02-11 05:40 am (UTC)Head out of the system
Looking for adventure
In whatever comes your way
Yeah, darlin'
Gonna make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space
This is interesting, but there's no commentary on how long this is stable. Without insolation, I suspect it is not viable over deep time. Millions of years, yes, but hardly a good idea for the really long haul.
On the other hand, this would make a breathtaking brute force generation ship.
Decelerating at the other end seems problematic.
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Date: 2011-02-11 07:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-02-11 10:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-02-11 03:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-02-16 01:20 pm (UTC)--Dave