A different world?

Discussion in 'Earth Science' started by atreides1977, Aug 9, 2003.

  1. atreides1977 Registered Member

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    lately i have presued the idea of a fission star and whould like to know how a planet would react to it. what materials would it be made of and how the planet would look geographicaly.
     
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  3. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Anyway you'd imagine it to look would be my answer. Seeing that there's no "fission " Stars that have been found yet, your imagination will have to do the work.
     
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  5. eburacum45 Valued Senior Member

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    Perhaps there wouldn't be any fission 'stars' as such (no way for fissionable material to get together in big enough lumps to ignite in a chain reaction without exploding;
    but there are almost certainly solid bodies in interstellar space, expelled by stellar collisions especially during star formation.

    Some of these will be Brown dwarfs, warming themselves by deuterium fusion...
    but some will be warmed only gravity like Jupiter, and some only by the radioactive elementsdeep in thier semisolid cores... if you imagine a star-less planet, with an unusually high content of radoactive material in the core, it might retain enough heat and atmosphere to be quite warm at the planetary surface;

    give it enough radioactives to be hot for billions of years, even in interstellar space, and you will have a glowing hot world, slowly cooling over time; there might even be a window of millions or billions of years where temperatures are right for life to exist on the surface or in the atmosphere.
    -----------------------------
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    Last edited: Aug 13, 2003
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  7. Gifted World Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    What about a moon like this. Rather than a star, though that would cerainly be unique, a moon orbiting the planet which has the right blend of elements to regulate the fission reactions. This would irradiate the planet, but be far simpler in theory.
     
  8. Ares Registered Senior Member

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    Er, what do you mean by 'fission star?' As has been explained above, all known stars generate their energy by thermonuclear fusion, i.e. the same process that creates energy in H-bombs. There is no evidence for stars being powered by fission reactions, and heavy elements amenable to fission (like U or Pu) are produced in supernova explosions in fairly small amounts, and the inherent instability of these elements makes them rather rare throughout the cosmos.
     

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