As far as we know, Earth is the only planet with life. So why are other planets so inhospitable? Which ones are the worst? And is it possible to create worlds even more inhospitable than the ones scientists have discovered so far? , hosts Leah Crane and Chelsea White tried to answer.
This special episode of Dead Planets Society was recorded at: new scientist live – new scientist‘s annual Festival of Ideas – will be held in London on October 8th.Leah and Chelsea joined us. Lewis DartnerAstrobiologist at the University of Westminster, UK, and vincent van eilenHe studies exoplanets at University College London.
There are many candidates for the least habitable planets known, some of which are very close to home. For example, one side of Mercury reaches temperatures of up to 430°C, while the other side remains at around -180°C. Other terrifying worlds are further afield, including the hot super-Jupiter called HAT-P-7b. HAT-P-7b is more than 1,000 light-years from our solar system and takes only two Earth days to orbit its star. It’s so hot and dense that it looks like it’s going to rain sapphires. There are planets that are slowly collapsing, and there are frigid worlds where there are no stars at all and nothing changes.
But to make all possible worlds worst, our brave hosts and their guests decided to combine as many of these unpleasant traits as possible. You could end up on a terrifying planet full of intense radiation, acid rain, extreme winds, extreme temperatures, and oceans of lava. And they discover that this terrifying world is surprisingly familiar…
Dead Planets Society is a podcast that takes wild ideas about how to tinker with the universe, from extinguishing the sun to causing a gravitational wave apocalypse, and applies them to the laws of physics to see how they fare.
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