Weirdest place you've found an Earth-Like World

[Pxtseryu]

Hey all,
While exploring some high mass systems below the core I came across a particularly interesting find - an eight million year old ELW orbiting a Herbig Ae/Be star!

Considering I haven't seen one of these in my 7 years of playing it makes me wonder - what's the most exotic place any of you have found an earth-like world?

 

[varonica]

I suppose this would have to be it, a ringed ELW orbiting a neutron star;

 

[marx]

Considering I haven't seen one of these in my 7 years of playing it makes me wonder - what's the most exotic place any of you have found an earth-like world?

Check this out.
In terms of most rare main stars of the system where people have found ELWs, that'd be L or T dwarfs, Wolf-Rayets, and O stars. In the last case though, the ELWs found have been orbiting other stars in the system, nobody has found an ELW directly orbiting an O star yet. (It's likely impossible.)
Oh, and congrats on your find! That's very rare.

 

[DjVortex]

an eight million year old ELW

Yeah, I don't think that's even close enough time for an ELW to form naturally. Maybe it was "seeded" by some alien race (maybe the Guardians)?

(Of course in reality it's likely a very outlier of the galactic generation algorithm, where such extreme and physically impossible situations can sometimes form because of a combination of extreme random values. However, one can always role-play and make in-universe hypotheses about how it was formed...)

 

[Tifu]

I didn't think it would be possible in the real universe but apparently it is, very improbable but still...

"A habitable planet orbiting a neutron star must be between one and 10 times the mass of the Earth. If the planet were lighter, its atmosphere would be lost. Its atmosphere must also be thick enough to convert the intense X-ray radiation from the neutron star into heat on its surface. Then it could have the temperature suitable for life."

Habitability of neutron star systems - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

(An artist's vision of the planets around the neutron star Lich.)

 

[Alkibiades]

There is a tourist beacon called "Delicate Dance".

A ringed earth in a neutron system is also ticked off since a long time.

 

[Sapyx]

Yeah, I don't think that's even close enough time for an ELW to form naturally. Maybe it was "seeded" by some alien race (maybe the Guardians)?

(Of course in reality it's likely a very outlier of the galactic generation algorithm, where such extreme and physically impossible situations can sometimes form because of a combination of extreme random values. However, one can always role-play and make in-universe hypotheses about how it was formed...)

Of course, there's an additional wrinkle here: a black hole in the system. The "Age" of a star reported by ED is the age of that entire star system's formation, including the star which is now a black hole. So, at some stage in the past 8 million years a supernova exploded here - probably less than half that amount; the biggest, fastest-burning stars still take 3 to 4 million years to go from first ignition to supernova - turning the companion star into a black hole. That explosion would have flash-vaporized everything from the surface of every world in this system; any life on this planet would have had to have been buried deep underground to survive that. So the complex Earth-like surface life is more like 3 to 4 million years old.

Panspermia or "the aliens did it" are much more probable explanations than such rapid abiogenesis. Though, there's another white giant star in that system that's likely about to explode, so I highly doubt that a responsible alien-Johnny-Appleseed would have deliberately planted life here, since it's not going to be around for much longer. That just seems cruel.

 

[varonica]

Panspermia or "the aliens did it" are much more probable explanations than such rapid abiogenesis.

Hmm, wandering planet with all the elements necessary for ELW captured after the big event? Would there be time? Some estimates put the necessary time span at as little as 50m years once all the necessary elements are in place, and with a wandering planet that was already maybe an ELW before getting ejected from it's home system 50m years does seem possible, I mean it only took 65m years from when the dinosaurs died out to have a full panoply of mammals and marsupials. Maybe the planet wouldn't have advanced life forms, but I am thinking simple plants and algae, enough to call it an ELW capable of supporting human life.

 

[DjVortex]

I mean it only took 65m years from when the dinosaurs died out to have a full panoply of mammals and marsupials.

Once you have rich diversified worldwide lifeforms, speciation into entirely new species can happen very fast. Doesn't even take millions of years.

That's completely different from not having any life at all, and the planet becoming "earth-like". I'm not sure a few tens of millions of years is even close to enough time for that. Current estimates for how long it took for multicellular life to form on Earth is about 3 billion years. Add a billion or so years more for complex multicellular life (which is, in fact, relatively recent on Earth, "only" about 600 million years ago, which is just a fraction of the entire existence of life on Earth.).

 

[varonica]

Once you have rich diversified worldwide lifeforms, speciation into entirely new species can happen very fast. Doesn't even take millions of years.

That's completely different from not having any life at all, and the planet becoming "earth-like". I'm not sure a few tens of millions of years is even close to enough time for that. Current estimates for how long it took for multicellular life to form on Earth is about 3 billion years. Add a billion or so years more for complex multicellular life (which is, in fact, relatively recent on Earth, "only" about 600 million years ago, which is just a fraction of the entire existence of life on Earth.).

No it isn't, Stromatolites were found on earth more than 3 billion years ago, since earth is only 4.6 billion years ago that makes 1.6 billion years from the formation of the earth. But hold on, for the first few hundred million years earth was uninhabitable anyway, lava surface, heavy impact from asteroids and meteorites, until cooled down enough. In fact scientists estimate the earth had conditions to support life around 4.3 billion years ago, most of it would have been soft life, multicellular as well so wouldn't have left any evidence. That's only a few hundred million years since earths formation. So if we are positing what was once an already ELW but just frozen once it heats up a few million years may have actually been enough for complex life to evolve.

The findings, reported by MIT earth scientists today in Nature, suggest that eukaryotes — the domain of life comprising animals, plants, and protists — were present on Earth as early as 2.33 billion years ago, right around the time when oxygen became a permanent fixture in the atmosphere

 

[Erratic Spawn]

Found this thread by accident today, here something from my archives (found on Dec 3, 2019):
ELW orbiting an HMCW orbiting a Neutron Star
Eos Flee ND-Z d1-1

 

[Ozzie_J_Isaacs]

Four months ago I had this beautiful find.
An Earth-like in a Black Hole system, around a ringed White Dwarf.

There was also an Ammonia World.

 

[Arcane26]

The best one that comes to mind was one that I found earlier this year. An ELM orbiting a water world in 1.4 days, located in an H mass herbig system, Dumboea AA-A h101

...now that I am thinking about it, y'all might wanna check this one out too: Screaki AA-A h10 A 6 a, a TERRAFORMABLE water world orbiting its parent T Tauri star in 0.0 days. It is located just beyond the star's exclusion zone. Absolutely wild. Also here are bodies 3 and 4, a T Tauri and gas giant respectively, that orbit one another in .2 days

 

[Pirin]

Nice find, OP

My 3 most unusual ELWs would be (without any particular order):

1. ELW Orbiting a Herbig in a system where the main star is O
2. ELW moon of a lava planet orbiting neutron star, which is the center of a planetary nebula
3. This

Spoiler

 

[marx]

About the life part: the requirements for ELWs in ED seem to be configured towards whether the atmosphere would be breathable for humans, and if they could survive the temperatures outside. If they didn't all use the same model, with green landmasses, but had more variety instead, then we could see Earth-like worlds that are mostly barren, as complex life hasn't had the time to appear yet. Sure, maybe a would-be astronaut could find life if they analysed soil or water samples on such worlds, but not when they landed and just looked outside.

 

[Laura Gotie]

 

[Laura Gotie]

Приближенная к Земле планета, окруженная черной дырой

 

[Laura Gotie]

Earth-bound planet surrounded by a black hole