Terraformed Planet with life - Temperature of 345 degrees kelvin? HUH?

*** 11 February 3303 **
*** From: CMDR Derek "BoxMann" Speare ***
*** To: Community at large ***
*** Present Location: LHS 139 ***
*** Subject: Unusual planet temperatures ***

Greetings!

I'm presently in the LHS 139 System, Watt Orbital, which orbits the planet LHS 139 A. The information on the planet indicates a surface temperature of 342 degrees Kelvin. That's ~156 degrees F, or ~68 degrees C. This does not make sense. Such temps would not be suitable to human life, and since there are ample lights on the surface I can only conclude humans inhabit the place.

Perhaps an experienced explorer can help me understand this paradox. I'm thinking a bug, but I am new.

Thanks!
 
Personally I love to have variation like this. If FD can make planets in the future with the variation that Space Engine has....I don't think the game could be anymore perfect
 
Ok, if it's average then the planet has an average temp of 155 degrees F...that's too hot for life, or at least human.

What's the difference between Kelvin and degrees kelvin? All I know is degrees kelvin.
 
Last edited:

Yaffle

Volunteer Moderator
Ok, if it's average then the planet has an average temp of 155 degrees F...that's too hot for life, or at least human.

What is "pedant mode"?

I was being unnecessarily pedantic about the units of temperature used.
 
Fun fact: in ED, the maximum temperature that "natural" (non-terraformed) Earth-like Worlds can have is 320 K. Above that, they'll be classified as water worlds. If that terraformed world's average temperature really is 342 K, then that sounds like a bug.
 
Last edited:
*** 11 February 3303 **
*** From: CMDR Derek "BoxMann" Speare ***
*** To: Community at large ***
*** Present Location: LHS 139 ***
*** Subject: Unusual planet temperatures ***

Greetings!

I'm presently in the LHS 139 System, Watt Orbital, which orbits the planet LHS 139 A. The information on the planet indicates a surface temperature of 342 degrees Kelvin. That's ~156 degrees F, or ~68 degrees C. This does not make sense. Such temps would not be suitable to human life, and since there are ample lights on the surface I can only conclude humans inhabit the place.

Perhaps an experienced explorer can help me understand this paradox. I'm thinking a bug, but I am new.

Thanks!

Not really that bad all things considering, remember surface temperature isn't equal everywhere, even if say only a fourth of a planet is hospitable it is definitely worth doing so, heck even if was only around polar regions, its a planet. And we don't know terraformable for 'what' technically it could be for a gardening planet, or any other kind of stuff that might take advantage of the high temperatures?
teraformable doesn't mean 'like earth'
 
With an average temperature that high then it must, despite terraforming, have a wide equatorial region that's too hot for people to live and colonised areas in the higher latitudes where it is more temperate and comfortable.

Vineyards at the North Pole FTW :)
 
Fun fact: in ED, the maximum temperature that "natural" (non-terraformed) Earth-like Worlds can have is 320 K. Above that, they'll be classified as water worlds. If that terraformed world's average temperature really is 342 K, then that sounds like a bug.

I see 49 ELW in eddb with temperature above 320K
 
I see 49 ELW in eddb with temperature above 320K
Thanks for the tip! I took a look, and all of those are terraformed ELW-s, not natural ones. So that temperature limit is ignored for terraformed worlds: I wonder if that's intentional or a bug.
 
I live in Florida - it is hot here :/

I'm thinking that newman1702 is correct. The inhabitants of the planet are likely claiming that the science backing up their high temperatures are inaccurate and false...
 
Ok, if it's average then the planet has an average temp of 155 degrees F...that's too hot for life, or at least human.

What's the difference between Kelvin and degrees kelvin? All I know is degrees kelvin.

Scientifically Kelvin temperatures are called just called Kelvin, so 320 Kelvin or 320k. Colloquially we say degrees Fahrenheit, degrees Celsius and degrees Kelvin but in all cases the degrees bit is redundant, we can just say 320F, 320C or 320K. Some people are indeed pedantic, I have a bit of it myself but I try to restrain it because some people find it annoying!
 
I've been doing tourist missions, and the last one I did was to go to the hottest terraformed world. It turned out to be Osira A3 and the temperature on the planet was staggering 385 degrees K.
 
"Naturally-occurring" - that is, procedurally-generated - Earth-like planets have a fairly narrow temperature range: the fifty-odd ELWs I've personally discovered out in deep space have had temperatures ranging from 261 K to 315 K; I suspect the actual working range for the stellar forge is 260 to 320.

LHS 139 is a hand-coded system, with hand-coded planets. Hand-coding, if it's not done carefully, can result in some rather crazy planetary environments and situations, especially if someone makes a typo in the data. Check out the moon of New Africa in Epsilon Indi if you want to see an extreme example of wrongly coded orbital data.

However, one thing to point out about the OP's world, which may make things more believable, in your head at least. At only 0.6% water at that temperature, the planet is definitely in the "desert" rather than "jungle" category. Think "Star-Wars-Tatooine", rather than "Avatar-Pandora". This, of course, is ever shown in the actual appearance of tidally-locked planets in ED.
 
Back
Top Bottom