As the title says is there a variation of ammonia worlds just as I have found a few in my time out but the last one had a ammonia oxygen atmosphere which I hadn't seen before
Ammonia world sub variant?
- Thread starter Armholeeio
- Start date
"Ammonia world" doesn't mean there's ammonia in the atmosphere, it means there's liquid ammonia on the surface, and ammonia-based life swimming in that ammonia ocean. Just like "water world" means there's liquid water on the surface.
The different appearances of ammonia worlds are due entirely to the thicknesses of their atmospheres. In the examples posted by Zenith above, we have (1) "normal" atmosphere, (2) "thick" atmosphere, and (3) no atmosphere. "No atmosphere" is, of course, physically impossible to happen on a world with a surface ocean; it doesn't matter what the temperature is or if it's water or liquid ammonia, you need atmospheric pressure above it to keep it liquid. But nobody seems to have told the stellar forge about this particular law of physics.
The different appearances of ammonia worlds are due entirely to the thicknesses of their atmospheres. In the examples posted by Zenith above, we have (1) "normal" atmosphere, (2) "thick" atmosphere, and (3) no atmosphere. "No atmosphere" is, of course, physically impossible to happen on a world with a surface ocean; it doesn't matter what the temperature is or if it's water or liquid ammonia, you need atmospheric pressure above it to keep it liquid. But nobody seems to have told the stellar forge about this particular law of physics.
A small error there: neither ammonia nor water world means that the ammonia/water present on the surface is in liquid form. It's kind of hard to tell from orbit, but I believe there are water worlds which are completely covered in a surface layer of ice. The game's description for ammonia worlds certainly doesn't mention liquid anywhere though. As such, it might be that on the airless ammonia worlds the ammonia is frozen - although the terrain features don't seem to suggest it. However, let's not forget that on atmospheric worlds, terrain is mostly a placeholder and will be revisited in more detail later.
Also, it's quite likely that whatever form of ammonia is present on the surface, it's not pure ammonia. Same as how the Earth's oceans aren't pure water either. I am not a chemist, but I think that pure solid ammonia would look white anyway. There might be all kinds of funky solutions down there.
Oh, and another possibility is that the airless ammonia world had an atmosphere before, but has since shed it. In this case, the surface liquid ammonia would be turning into vapor and probably lost to space. So you'd get a world with airless landmasses and oceans evaporating into space.
Damn, now I want to land on these things to take a look at them.
The different appearances of ammonia worlds are due entirely to the thicknesses of their atmospheres. In the examples posted by Zenith above, we have (1) "normal" atmosphere, (2) "thick" atmosphere, and (3) no atmosphere. "No atmosphere" is, of course, physically impossible to happen on a world with a surface ocean; it doesn't matter what the temperature is or if it's water or liquid ammonia, you need atmospheric pressure above it to keep it liquid. But nobody seems to have told the stellar forge about this particular law of physics.[/QUOTE]