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LEXLOTHOR — Exoplanetscape 6
Published: 2012-07-27 17:52:19 +0000 UTC; Views: 815; Favourites: 21; Downloads: 13
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Description
More of my artistic speculations on planetary landscapes can be seen in my DA "Scientific Illustration" gallery:[link]
This might be referred to a "Soda Pop World". It is a planet close to one earth mass. It orbits a slightly cooler K Class star than our home world. It is covered in oceans but they are not made of water. The surface is inundated in liquid fluorocarbon. Humans could actually dive in this compound so long as they were equiped with a source of oxygen.
The structures rising from the sea bed that resemble Watts Towers are forms that grow by percipitating carbonates and other compounds from out of solution. The banding about them suggests that they are rythmites keyed to the solar tides. Some very complex chemistry is going on in this warm sea. I leave it to speculation as to whether there are biological factors involved with this growth in the manner of Earthly stromatolites.
art & text (c) John P. Alexander
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Comments: 4
Very nice picture, not too sure about the backstory, tho.
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You said the towers were made of carbonate minerals, precipitated from fluorocarbon solution. I'm not well versed on carbonate chemistry in liquid fluorocarbons, but I know this sort of thing happens all the time in terrestrial bodies of water.
All things being equal, you should just let your "seas" be water.
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Where is the fun in that? There have been scholarly speculations about exoplanets with other liquids at their surfaces than water. A lot of planetary formation is dependent on how many generations of stars contributed to the planetary accretion disk of a system. We are not used to thinking in terms of planetary systems in with halogens are common. There might be worlds with oceans made of bromine. In the case of this illustration, exotic salts such a sodium fluoride or or calcium fluoride may settle out of solution.
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