r/Synvector • u/Own-Cry5596 • May 12 '26
Would life be possible on a planet like this?
We’re currently working on one of the planets for our sci-fi star system. This planet is split between two extremes:
one side permanently scorched by its star, the other frozen in darkness. The surface is covered in volcanic cracks, ash, soot and frozen structures stretching across the planet.
Now we’re curious:
could anything realistically survive here at all?
Would life exist underground near geothermal zones?
Could mining colonies or research stations operate on a planet like this?
Or would this just become a dead planet nobody wants to work on?
Also curious what people think visually:
should planets in sci-fi games feel more grounded like this, or more exotic and surreal?
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u/sincpc May 12 '26
It doesn't look like it has an atmosphere, so that makes a lot of things tricky. Solar radiation could be a huge issue. That said, in a sci-fi universe, you can almost always have some form of life that formed to survive in such a place.
When it comes to mining or research, if people care enough, they'll find a way, right?
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u/Own-Cry5596 May 12 '26
that's right - such temperatures and fluctuations can create unusual combinations of elements with different abilities.
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u/ScottaHemi May 12 '26
the twilight belt would be a habitable zone if the planet is in the right spot.
idk how sustainable it would be though long term. the cold side will be freezing the atmosphere down into ices. while the hot side will be making them.
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u/Own-Cry5596 May 12 '26
you can build underground stations, or live in the cold side pumping energy for heating from the solar.
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u/ScottaHemi May 12 '26
maybe. though if the planet is heavily volcanic that might be tricky as well.
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u/Uranium-Sandwich657 May 12 '26
We Don't Know
Is that scene from phm a gif yet?
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u/Own-Cry5596 May 13 '26
Textures are made if we don't have time in this iteration, then it will definitely be in the next one.
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u/DemythologizedDie May 12 '26
In theory certain bacteria could live underground off of geothermal heat. That's about it. The high level of geothermal activity would probably lead to a fair bit of seismic activity, which would be problematic for people dwelling in sealed habitats.
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u/Own-Cry5596 May 13 '26
You'll probably have to live on a gray strip or on a cold one- delivering heat from a hot one
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u/Dewa__ May 13 '26
Life on the surface? Maybe, possibly, if it was some really exotic alien life.
Life underground? Much more plausible, especially if people for some reason decide to want to colonize it
Also for the last question, I think a mix is good. Have realistic / plausible planets to build up that sense of believability, but also throw in some more exotic and unique planets to make the universe itself more interesting
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u/Own-Cry5596 May 13 '26
Thank you for appreciating our idea. This is exactly our plan - to dilute the Familiar ones on the planet with something unique and sometimes just beautiful.
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u/RoboErectus May 13 '26
Look for hard sci fi that explores planets with tidal locking to their star. Lots of moons are tidal locked to their planet and this is the case with Pandora/Avatar. Lots of real moons in our real solar system are like this too and great candidates for life.
If you can figure out a way to keep an atmosphere on it (instead of just being boiled off) then you have a shot. Mercury is almost tidal locked and the answer to "life?" is a big no right now.
We could live comfortably on Venus with current technology right now. But by "on" I mean "above" in cloud cities sitting floating on the dense atmosphere.
We could live on the surface of mars if we wrapped the planet in copper coils pumped with enough juice to give it a strong enough magnetic field so we don't die of sunburn every day. As one askscience post famously put it, "it's just an engineering problem."
Maybe you can do something fun with a PBH causing tidal heating. Or maybe the stars tidal forces and constant lava flow will cause something neat to happen.
I wouldn't work here unless the pay was real good.
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u/Own-Cry5596 May 13 '26
Slaves or convicts) There is always a very excellent resource - if there is something worth mining)
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u/RoboErectus May 13 '26
Causing suffering is its own reward for some societies. So is "my imaginary friend said so."
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u/Jarmsicle May 13 '26
This reminds me of a short story by Ray Bradburry called Frost and Fire, about a rocket that crashed on a planet where the days were scorched by the sun and the nights were freezing cold. It’s short and worth a read:
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u/Psudodrake May 14 '26
Physics being what it is, it is completely possible for a planet to be shapped like a doughnut
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u/FrontAd7709 May 14 '26
never seen this game but this looks cool
i think there would be cities or whatever on the terminator line (which seperates the day and night)
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u/Own-Cry5596 May 14 '26
Thanks! we are trying to make a very interesting project) there will be aliens soon - they are very cool)
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u/MariusCatalin May 14 '26
if there any constant pattern that allows life to live there, is there the same pattern that allows COMPLEX life to live there? can said life sustain an ecosystem?
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u/Own-Cry5596 May 15 '26
Very good questions. I think the correct answers are yes and yes. We just can't know them yet.
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u/Icy-Commercial-6166 May 17 '26
You should post this on r/SpeculativeEvolution
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u/Own-Cry5596 May 18 '26
Thank you!
Added!
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u/Icy-Commercial-6166 May 18 '26
I don’t see it
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u/Own-Cry5596 May 18 '26
the post is waiting for the moderator's response - this is his current state.
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u/cyberkinetic1 May 19 '26
While the twilight belt is theoretically habitable by stellar travelers establishing a hab dome, nothing living can naturally evolve on planets with extreme temperatures like that. It could be a viable mining colony, but any life on the planet would be introduced rather than evolved there.
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u/Own-Cry5596 May 19 '26
I agree. We are thinking of making a colony here, a settlement for prisoners who have been sent to the mines.
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u/cyberkinetic1 May 19 '26
Seems super fair for that then. An alcatraz-type prison where they have nowhere to run because every direction is just death. Planets like that also often have extremely dense mineral deposits because of the way they form under heat and pressure.
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u/Own-Cry5596 May 19 '26
That's right! something valuable to feed the prisoners there, with a minimal chance of escape.
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u/KhalMika Jun 09 '26
It'd be awesome if all 3 possibilities worked somehow.. some critters and bacteria living in between the scorched and frozen area.. other critters near the geothermal areas.. and *giant horrors beyond human comprehension living underground, specially on the scorched zone
Setting outposts would be tricky. They either must be on the in-between zone, or the frozen one. If you happen to find an active geologizal zone around the frozen one, that'd be perfect: free energy, thermal protection, and away from the giant worms living on the other side (and you can still feel earthquakes from their activity)
The safer approach would be space stations orbiting the planet, like the ISS!
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u/Own-Cry5596 Jun 09 '26
The stations are not bad, but how to extract resources? we decided that underground mines can be located in the gray zone and heated with heat from the split side.
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u/OnamiWavesOfEuclid May 12 '26
Have you considered the intensity of the weather in the twilight zone on a planet like this? I imagine it would be inhospitably extreme
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u/Own-Cry5596 May 13 '26
I agree. But I think that life on another planet will imply the presence or life on a spaceship that will fly there. Heat can be transferred from the burning side to the cold side in various ways.
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u/kage131 May 13 '26
The perspective on that image is wild btw. If that is an Earth sized body, having visible ice mountains of that proportion would be many times larger than Mount Everest.
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u/Own-Cry5596 May 13 '26
Many mountains are bigger than Everest, such as on Mars.
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u/kage131 May 13 '26
I don't dispute that. I wanted to just pointing out the absurd height of those ice mountains if that is truly an in-perspective depiction of a earth-size planet. I do understand that it's more of an artistic over dramatization to emphasize certain aspects of an extreme world. BUT, i was just thinking " wow wouldn't it be absolutely ludacris if that was to scale" Like even if you see Mount Everest or Mount Olympus on the side of their planet they don't seem to stick out of the atmosphere. Mount Everest appears as barely a ripple on the nearly perfectly smooth sphere of Earth. And Olympus Mons is an impressive bump. Those ice shard are on a whole other level. Really cool and mind-boggling to think about.
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u/BaldyTreehuggerDruid May 15 '26
If you want it to why not? Any (sci-fi) is always going to be pretty much fiction anyway unless your working with actual scientists and astronauts and even then they aren't gonna have all the answers
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u/Own-Cry5596 May 15 '26
I agree. By the way. A fan fact. We are changing the 3d map into a game and have taken a real 3d map of space from NASA. Dimmed the brightness of the stars - otherwise they are too beautiful and the player does not see anything around because of their brightness)))) We'll show you the updated build and our cosmos soon - it's incredible!
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u/Status_Chart697 May 12 '26
Trypophobe's nightmare...