by John Olson » Tue Aug 30, 2011 12:43 pm
While Wikipedia says that “brown dwarves are fully convective,” at 27C and several atmospheres of pressure, there are lots of chemical compounds that would be liquid, solid, or solutes. So there must be clouds and there might be rain on this brown dwarf. And it must get warmer with depth, so the raain would only fall so far before it evaporated and convected up again. Now, I suppose my imagined condensed species may well be advected deeper into the atmosphere by the prevailing hydrogen convection, but nonetheless I don't think it's outrageous to propose that there could be a “wet” layer on such a star, a zone where you could have enough liquid water to be biologically interesting.
I doubt that life could evolve in such a turbulent environment, but if it were seeded from the outside, you might evolve life forms capable of keeping themselves in the wet layer indefinitely. It makes me think of Larry Niven's Integral Trees, though it's a very different environment.
Pure speculation, of course. But fun to think about.
While Wikipedia says that “brown dwarves are fully convective,” at 27C and several atmospheres of pressure, there are lots of chemical compounds that would be liquid, solid, or solutes. So there must be clouds and there might be rain on this brown dwarf. And it must get warmer with depth, so the raain would only fall so far before it evaporated and convected up again. Now, I suppose my imagined condensed species may well be advected deeper into the atmosphere by the prevailing hydrogen convection, but nonetheless I don't think it's outrageous to propose that there could be a “wet” layer on such a star, a zone where you could have enough liquid water to be biologically interesting.
I doubt that life could evolve in such a turbulent environment, but if it were seeded from the outside, you might evolve life forms capable of keeping themselves in the wet layer indefinitely. It makes me think of Larry Niven's [i]Integral Trees,[/i] though it's a very different environment.
Pure speculation, of course. But fun to think about.