Earth like world around neutron star!

Kim_S

Kim_S
Scary find, sadly already discovered, but I was out exploring with a friend and we decided to head out to the Rift. He went high, I went low.

And I found a lovely neutron star, so I went in to take a look around. And there it was. A nice system with a water world, and an earth like.

Now the water world was a steamy 400K but the earth like was a rather tasty 300K. With a companion terraformable world.

But wow, these things are orbiting a neutron star. Imagine what that must be like, and imagine what that neutron star birth must have been like when it happened :cool:

Anyway, I'm sure this formation must be super rare? How common could an earth like around a neutron star actually be? Aren't neutron stars super dangerous things? I'm no scientist as you can probably tell :D
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
There are currently 9740 ELWs listed in the database thread. Of those, 511 of them are in systems where the primary star is a neutron star and of those, 168 of them are in systems where the neutron star is the only star in the system. Now, there is some statistical bias in this - prior to 2.3, farming the neutron star fields was the fastest way to gain cash by exploring (and the fastest way to an Elite ranking), so a disproportionately high number of neutron stars have been scanned. Still, 5% of total Earth-likes being found around neutron stars is a very high number.

The reason I suspect is the very wide "Goldilocks zone" a neutron star has - usually much wider than a normal star, since a neutron star is so much hotter. So although planets around neutron stars tend to be fewer than around normal stars, the probability of one of those planets hitting the Goldilocks zone is surprisingly high. Earth-0sized planets also appear to be more probable around neutron stars than larger or smaller planets, which would also increase the odds.

As for how realistic it is, well, no, probably not. As far as we can tell, a planet within a neutron star's Goldilocks zone would receive far too much deadly radiation, which a planet like Earth itself would have no shielding for. The stellar forge calculations seem to only model "amount of radiation", not "quality of radiation". And obviously, any planets, and any ecosystems arising on such planets, would have to have been formed after the supernova event that created the neutron star, as no life and no planets could survive a supernova explosion.
 

Major Klutz

Major Klutz
I recall finding an ELW around a NS once myself. Somewhere on the way to Sag A*

IRL, I doubt any habitable planets could exist around a NS.
Unless I'm mistaken, any Earth like that existed when the star system was formed, would have been destroyed when the star collapsed into a neutron star.
The radiation would sterilize everything in the system, if not completely vaporize any planets that existed.


Is it realistic that the "goldilocks zone" would be bigger for a NS?
I would think the total energy output should be less than a sequencing star. The NS is no longer producing energy, it has shed much of it's mass, and what energy it has left is concentrated into a smaller area as it cools off very slowly.
 
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BaldEagle

BaldEagle
I can't seem to find the pics, but I discovered a NS with a single planet - an ELW!
It looked to be a lonely place to set up home!:)
 

marx

marx
Sapyx has it right. Some minor additions: the ELW list doesn't include the number of systems visited, and thanks to neutron star farming earlier and neutron star boosting now, they are sought-after stars and probably at least somewhat overrepresented. Still, their rarity is higher or at least on par with that of red dwarfs. Mind you, that still means they are an uncommon find, but not super rare as OP put it.
For super rare, it's basically anything outside the A-F-G-K-M-NS set.

As for habitability: bear in mind that ELWs are likely to change in the future, and that the current criteria can only be summed up as "must be breathable without aid", and not "has complex life on the surface". It might entirely be likely that an Earth-like world close enough to a neutron star never had the chance to have complex life evolve on its surface, or it was scoured mostly clean. Sure, every ELW appears green from orbit now, but later we might just find mostly-barren worlds with a water weather cycle and a breathable atmosphere.
Another example: ELWs around Herbig Ae/Be protostars, which simply haven't had the time required for life to evolve on the surface. Yet they still appear green from orbit - for now.

Oh, and mind you, just because a planet is Earth-like now doesn't mean it always was earlier, nor that it will always be. See neutron stars and protostars as good examples.
 
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Major Klutz

Major Klutz
Any planet with a "breathable" atmosphere has to have life. Or at least some ongoing chemical process to free up oxygen.
Without life, all Oxygen in the atmosphere would quickly become bound up with carbon or hydrogen and the atmosphere would no longer be breathable.
 

marx

marx
Major Klutz said:
Any planet with a "breathable" atmosphere has to have life. Or at least some ongoing chemical process to free up oxygen.
Without life, all Oxygen in the atmosphere would quickly become bound up with carbon or hydrogen and the atmosphere would no longer be breathable.
Click to expand...
Mind you, I didn't say without life, but without complex life. Perhaps that's a wrong phrase, IANAB. By that, I mostly meant organisms large enough to be seen with the naked eye. In the future, it might be that a Commander touches down on an ELW expecting to find strange animals hopping around strange trees, only to see a landscape that appears barren.
 

Major Klutz

Major Klutz
No argument. Even if all microbes were sterilized, the building blocks would be there and perhaps would evolve back into microbes again.
Some might even be sheltered on the far side of a tidally locked planet and could then re-seed the planet after the radiation levels subsided.
Anything's possible.

I suppose a vulcan like planet that has oceans, a breathable atmosphere and is otherwise barren could still be considered "Earth Like" even if it doesn't much resemble Earth.
 
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