ELW orbiting a T Tauri star
- Thread starter Speccy
- Start date
How about a pair of ELWs orbiting a Herbig Ae/Be (primary is class B star)? 
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...discoveries!?p=6772812&viewfull=1#post6772812
System in question: Thailoae BQ-Y f0
Apparently the Stellar Forge doesn't take system age in account, only the 'goldilocks zone' when creating ELWs & terraformables.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...discoveries!?p=6772812&viewfull=1#post6772812
System in question: Thailoae BQ-Y f0
Apparently the Stellar Forge doesn't take system age in account, only the 'goldilocks zone' when creating ELWs & terraformables.
We still don't really know how long it takes for an "Earth-like" planet to become Earth-like. Sure, it took 5 billion years for Earth to become Earth-like, and for most of that time Earth wasn't actually "Earth-like" according to ED criteria. But maybe life on Earth was actually rather unlucky in this regard; if life got lucky, it might make a world inhabitable quite quickly. There are some who speculate that this may even have happened here in Sol, with Mars originally being much more "Earth-like" than Earth was a couple of billion years ago, when the Sun was much younger.
It is true, however, that a T Tauri protostar is likely to have a very unstable planetary environment, with lots of protoplanets whizzing about and smashing into each other. So I'd agree that such a planet being stable enough for long enough for an Earth-like ecosystem to arise is improbable.
Unless they had help. There are plenty of inhabited ELWs around T Tauri stars to be found in the Bubble - they're Earth-like because Humans have terraformed them. Maybe this is evidence of alien terraforming at work?
It is true, however, that a T Tauri protostar is likely to have a very unstable planetary environment, with lots of protoplanets whizzing about and smashing into each other. So I'd agree that such a planet being stable enough for long enough for an Earth-like ecosystem to arise is improbable.
Unless they had help. There are plenty of inhabited ELWs around T Tauri stars to be found in the Bubble - they're Earth-like because Humans have terraformed them. Maybe this is evidence of alien terraforming at work?
As for in-game rarity, Marx's ELW list has 43 of them found around T Tauris, including 22 that have the T Tauri as the only primary star in the system. Compare that to 663/201 for the same stats for ELWs orbiting neutron stars. Now, neutrons are far more likely to be explored than T Tauris, so there are probably an awful lot more T Tauri ELWs out there.
I think the problem comes from that planets are classified by Elite as Earth-like only when certain criteria for habitability are met, age is ignored, and all ELWs look the same and have the same descriptions. They are the same class, after all. A planet that's very young but has a breathable atmosphere shouldn't have green flora that's visible from orbit (unless it evolves very quickly, or was seeded). Perhaps one day, Earth-likes in Elite will be differentiated, and then these will likely be (mostly) barren.
I'd still say that 43 ELWs around TTS are very rare, since these are out of more than 12,000 Earth-likes found. Granted, there is the fact that people aren't likely to look around protostars, but even in the instances when they do, such finds rarely happen.
It may be a T Tauri ELW is more common thank you think but they are often left off the filtering lists. I did a mission the find ELWs on unusual systems and found a ELW orbiting a single T Tauri within 200 attempts.
However it took over 600 attempts bookmarking type B8 and B9 'B' stars before I found an ELW on one of those.
I would say "earth-like" is pretty broad definition. Most earth-likes I have seen seem pretty horrible places and I would never consider removing helmet on them. Ever seen nature documentaries about various lifeforms on Earth? Even that place is absolutely lethal. Now imagine 30% oxygen content in atmosphere.