Desert planet

Short description: Rocky planet whose surface is dominated by desert

Mars, an example of a cold desert planet, seen by the Mars Orbiter Mission space probe

A desert planet, also known as a dry planet, an arid planet, or a dune planet, is a type of terrestrial planet that is arid at the surface level.

Deserts can be cold or hot, and even retain water, like Antarctica or the Sahara on Earth; however, desert planets are arid across their entire surface. Mars is a prominent example of a (cold) desert planet with a tenuous atmosphere.[1]

But also other arid planets with atmospheres more as well as less dense have been identified as desert planets, like Venus[2] and Mercury.[3]

## Contents

* 1 Habitability
* 2 Science fiction
* 3 See also
* 4 Notes
* 5 References

## Habitability

A 2011 study suggested that not only are life-sustaining desert planets possible, but that they might be more common than Earth-like planets.[4] The study found that, when modeled, desert planets had a much larger habitable zone than ocean planets.[4] The same study also speculated that Venus may have once been a habitable desert planet as recently as 1 billion years ago.[4] It is also predicted that Earth will become a desert planet within a billion years due to the Sun's increasing luminosity.[4]

A study conducted in 2013 concluded that hot desert planets without runaway greenhouse effect can exist in 0.5 AU around Sun-like stars. In that study, it was concluded that a minimum humidity of 1% is needed to wash off carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but too much water can act as a greenhouse gas itself. Higher atmospheric pressures increase the range in which the water can remain liquid.[2]

In a 2026 study, computer calculations show that arid terrestrial planets may have unbalanced geologic carbon cycles due to runoff-limits to weathering, which can lead to a loss of habitability and runaway warming. [note 1] Even if a given planet is in the Habitable Zone (HZ), it can transition to an uninhabitable state if it does not have enough initial surface water to balance outgassing and weathering fluxes. So a planet with less than 10% Earth's oceans (as comparison half of the Atlantic Ocean), couldn't keep a balanced carbon cycle, entering in a runaway warming state, being unlikely to be habitable. The minimum threshold of surface water required to maintain a balanced carbon cycle would be around 0.2–0.5 Earth’s oceans by mass.[5]

## Science fiction

The concept has become a common setting in science fiction,[6] appearing as early as the 1956 film Forbidden Planet and Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune.[7][8][9] The environment of the desert planet Arrakis (also known as Dune) in the Dune franchise drew inspiration from the Middle East, particularly the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf, as well as Mexico.[10] Dune in turn inspired the desert planets which prominently appear in the Star Wars franchise,[11] including the planets Tatooine, Geonosis, and Jakku.

## See also

* Exoplanet
* Ocean world

## Notes

1. ↑ The Carbon cycle can be keept in planets with enough liquid surface water: atmospheric CO2 dissolves in rain to form carbonic acid, such acid reacts with continental silicate rocks, trapping so the carbon. This cycle is balanced by feedback: as more atmospheric CO2 is accumulated by volcanic outgassing, temperatures increase by its greenhouse effect, increasing also water evaporation and rain, which draw down the CO2 excess. If the carbon cycle is unbalanced it can accumlate freely in the atmosphere, so that high temperatures will evaporate all water (then solar photodissociation breaks de atomic bounds of H2O resulting in hydrogen escape and final loss of water inventories).

## References

1. ↑ "Mars". https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/mars/overview.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Andras Zsom; Sara Seager; Julien de Wit; Vlada Stamenkovic (September 4, 2013). "Towards the Minimum Inner Edge Distance of the Habitable Zone". The Astrophysical Journal 778 (2): 109. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/778/2/109. Bibcode: 2013ApJ...778..109Z.
3. ↑ "Top Five Mercury mysteries that BepiColombo will solve". https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/BepiColombo/Top_Five_Mercury_mysteries_that_BepiColombo_will_solve.
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Choi, Charles Q. (September 2, 2011). "Alien Life More Likely on Dune Planets". Astrobiology Magazine. http://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/alien-life-more-likely-on-dune-planets/.
5. ↑ White-Gianella, Haskelle T.; Krissansen-Totton, Joshua (2026-04-01). "Carbon Cycle Imbalances on Arid Terrestrial Planets with Implications for Venus". The Planetary Science Journal 7 (4): 79. doi:10.3847/PSJ/ae4faa. ISSN 2632-3338. This article incorporates text from this source, which is available under the CC BY 4.0 license.
6. ↑ Touponce, William F. (1988). "Intellectual Background". Frank Herbert. Boston: Twayne Publishers imprint, G. K. Hall & Co. p. 119. ISBN 978-0-8057-7514-3.
7. ↑ Wright, Les. "Forbidden Planet (1956)". Culturevulture.net (Internet Archive). http://www.culturevulture.net/Movies4/ForbiddenPlanet.htm.
8. ↑ Hladik, Tamara I.. "Classic Sci-Fi Reviews: Dune". SciFi.com. http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue42/classic.html.
9. ↑ Michaud, Jon (July 12, 2013). "Dune Endures". The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/07/dune-endures.html. Retrieved November 27, 2013.
10. ↑ Lynch, Tom; Glotfelty, Cheryll; Armbruster, Karla (2012). The Bioregional Imagination: Literature, Ecology, and Place. University of Georgia Press. p. 230. ISBN 9780820343679. https://books.google.com/books?id=flt4Uea3oOcC&pg=PA230.
11. ↑ "Star Wars is Dune". D. A. Houdek. http://www.dahoudek.com/pages/starwarsdune.htm.

* v
* t
* e

Exoplanetology

* Planet
* Definition
* IAU
* Planetary science

Main topics|

* Exoplanet
* Methods of detecting exoplanets
* Planetary system

Sizes
and types|

| Terrestrial|

* Carbon planet
* Coreless planet
* Desert planet
* Dwarf planet
* Ice planet
* Iron planet
* Lava planet
* Mega-Earth
* Ocean planet
* Sub-Earth
* Super-Earth

|

Gaseous|

* Eccentric Jupiter
* Gas dwarf
* Helium planet
* Hot Jupiter
* Hot Neptune
* Ice giant
* Mini-Neptune
* Super-Neptune
* Super-Jupiter

Other types|

* Brown dwarf
* Chthonian planet
* Circumbinary planet
* Disrupted planet
* Double planet
* Eyeball planet
* Mesoplanet
* Planemo
* Planet/Brown dwarf boundary
* Planetesimal
* Protoplanet
* Pulsar planet
* Sub-brown dwarf
* Ultra-cool dwarf
* Ultra-short period planets (USP)

Formation
and evolution|

* Accretion
* Accretion disk
* Asteroid belt
* Circumplanetary disk
* Circumstellar disc
* Circumstellar envelope
* Cosmic dust
* Debris disk
* Detached object
* Disrupted planet
* Excretion disk
* Exoplanetary Circumstellar Environments and Disk Explorer
* Exozodiacal dust
* Extraterrestrial materials
* Extraterrestrial sample curation
* Giant-impact hypothesis
* Gravitational collapse
* Hills cloud
* Interplanetary dust cloud
* Interplanetary medium
* Interplanetary space
* Interstellar cloud
* Interstellar dust
* Interstellar medium
* Interstellar space
* Kuiper belt
* List of interstellar and circumstellar molecules
* Merging stars
* Molecular cloud
* Nebular hypothesis
* Oort cloud
* Outer space
* Planetary migration
* Planetary system
* Planetesimal
* Planet formation
* Protoplanetary disk
* Ring system
* Rubble pile
* Sample-return mission
* Scattered disc
* Star formation

Systems|

* Exocomet
* Exomoon
* Interstellar comet
* Mean-motion resonances
* Retrograde planet
* Rogue planet
* Tidally detached exomoon
* Titius–Bode laws
* Trojan planet

Host stars|

* A
* B
* Binary star
* Brown dwarfs
* Extragalactic planet
* F/Yellow-white dwarfs
* G/Yellow dwarfs
* Herbig Ae/Be
* K/Orange dwarfs
* M/Red dwarfs
* Planets in globular clusters
* Pulsar
* Red giant
* Subdwarf B
* Subgiant
* T Tauri
* White dwarfs
* Yellow giants

Detection|

* Astrometry
* Direct imaging
* list
* Microlensing
* list
* Polarimetry
* Pulsar timing
* list
* Radial velocity
* list
* Transit method
* list
* Transit-timing variation

Habitability|

* Astrobiology
* Circumstellar habitable zone
* Earth analog
* Extraterrestrial liquid water
* Habitability of natural satellites
* Superhabitable planet

Catalogues|

* Catalog of Nearby Habitable Systems
* Exoplanet Data Explorer
* Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia
* NASA Exoplanet Archive
* NASA Star and Exoplanet Database

Lists|

* Exoplanetary systems
* Host stars
* Multiplanetary systems
* Stars with proplyds
* Exoplanets
* Lists of exoplanets
* Discoveries
* Extremes
* Firsts
* Nearest
* Largest
* Most massive
* Terrestrial candidates
* Kepler
* Potentially habitable
* Discovered exoplanets by year
* before 2000
* 2000–2009
* 2010
* 2011
* 2012
* 2013
* 2014
* 2015
* 2016
* 2017
* 2018
* 2019

Other|

* Carl Sagan Institute
* Exoplanet phase curves
* Nexus for Exoplanet System Science
* Planets in science fiction
* Sudarsky's gas giant classification

* Discoveries of exoplanets
* Search projects

* v
* t
* e

Exoplanet search projects

* Exoplanetology
* Exoplanet

Ground-based|

* AAPS
* APF
* CORALIE
* EAPSNet
* ELODIE
* EPICS
* ESPRESSO
* FINDS Exo-Earths
* Geneva
* HARPS
* HARPS-N
* GPI
* HATNet
* HEK
* HiCIAO
* HIRES
* KELT
* LCES
* Magellan
* MARVELS
* MASCARA
* MEarth
* MicroFUN
* MINERVA
* Australis
* MOA
* N2K
* NGTS
* NESSI
* OGLE
* OPSP
* PlanetPol
* Project 1640
* PARAS
* SEEDS
* SETI
* SOPHIE
* SPECULOOS
* SPHERE
* SuperWASP
* Systemic
* TrES
* XO Telescope
* ZIMPOL/CHEOPS

Space missions|

| Past|

* MOST (2003–2019)
* SWEEPS using HST (2006)
* CoRoT (2006–2013)
* EPOXI using Deep Impact (2008–2013)
* Kepler (2009–2018)
* detected exoplanets

|

Current|

* Gaia (2013–present)
* ASTERIA (2017–present)
* TESS (2018–present)

Planned|

* CHEOPS (2019)
* James Webb Space Telescope (2021)
* PLATO (2026)
* ARIEL (2028)
* WFIRST (mid-2020s)

Proposed|

* ATLAST
* EXCEDE
* HabEx
* HDST
* LUVOIR
* Nautilus Deep Space Observatory
* New Worlds Mission
* OST
* PEGASE

Cancelled|

* Darwin
* EChO
* Eddington
* Space Interferometry Mission
* Terrestrial Planet Finder

* Detection methods
* Discoveries of exoplanets
* Lists of exoplanets
* nearest

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