
We’ll First Find Aliens on Eyeball Planets - TheLarch
http://nautil.us/blog/forget-earth_likewell-first-find-aliens-on-eyeball-planets
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dexwiz
I think the weight of the ice would an interesting point to consider in these
models. Glaciers definitely deform a planet's crust. The Great Lakes region
lies in a depression that is still rebounding from the last ice age.

Reading this, my first thought on the "hot eyeball" would be that the massive
ice cap would cause a depression on the night side. So no rivers would want to
flow to the day side. Then I remembered a study regarding icecaps melting
actually lowering the local sea level [1]. Since the ice is so massive, it
actually attracts the sea locally with its gravitational pull. So when the ice
melts, the pull is released, and the sea level lowers locally. So with the
oversize icecap on the night side, it would attract water to it, even further
preventing it from flowing to the day side.

[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/how-melting-ice-
sheet...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/how-melting-ice-sheet-could-
actually-lower-sea-level-some-places)

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TheLarch
Fascinating! I wish I had studied some geology. I learned here
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSSxdogrv1s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSSxdogrv1s)
that the mountains and lakes around Puget Sound run north-south because of
glacial descent, and that the huge boulders we find scattered about the area
are called 'erratics' as they were moved here by glaciers. I show everyone I
can that video but I just get weird looks.

I wished the article had fleshed out the ramifications of the ice cap a little
better.

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fragsworth
There's another type that they're missing. Given enough water and ice on the
planet, a hot planet could have a full ocean that is continually boiling on
one side and raining/snowing on the other, with little or no islands poking
out of the ocean.

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danblick
My prediction: we're going to invent alien intelligences on this planet a long
time before we find them in outer space.

