How to make an ice planet plausible

[Maur]

Re: How to make an ice planet plausible

 

ice world that sees liquid water due to stresses that occur from tidal gravity forces from orbiting a gas giant...

[Balok]

Re: How to make an ice planet plausible

 

One suggestion that doesn't require terraforming is to assume it had an ecology, once upon a time. And then something happened - some kind of extinction event. This could be something external, like an asteroid, or it could be the result of some natural process, like the one that has caused ice ages on Earth from time to time. This event destroyed whatever civilization was there (if any) long enough ago that no (or few) traces remain. Now, nothing is making oxygen... but nothing is using it, either. Sure, if you stay there long enough or bring in enough colonists without doing something to establish an ecosystem to regenerate the oxygen, you'll eventually have a problem. But for a small, secretive colony it will work.

 

If you need a primitive ecosystem, you can assume the planet cooled slowly and the cyanobacteria gradually evolved "antifreeze" enzymes (there are fish alive now that can be frozen solid and then thawed without ill-effect due to their cells' ability to make such things). So they can still exist even in the cold waters below the ice pack. The oxygen they make bubbles up and escapes to the air through cracks. For energy, they have evolved to live near undersea volcanic vents, and use infrared energy (heat) instead of light to power themselves. Perhaps they digest silicon dioxide (the most common element in an iron-silica body like Earth) and release oxygen. Perhaps they even lay down silicon paths in their enormous, fan-like colony structures through which electrical currents produced by salts and heat trickle...