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{{short description|Rocky planet whose surface is dominated by desert}}File:Tharsis and Valles Marineris - Mars Orbiter Mission (30055660701).png|thumb|Mars, an example of a cold desert planet, seen by the Mars Orbiter Mission space probe in true color with a regular Bayer filterBayer filterA desert planet, also known as a dry planet, an arid planet, or a dune planet, is a type of terrestrial planet with an arid surface consistency similar to Earth's deserts. Mars is a prominent example of a desert planet in the Solar System.WEB, Mars,weblink 2023-05-01, NASA Solar System Exploration,

History

A 2011 study suggested that not only are life-sustaining desert planets possible, but that they might be more common than Earth-like planets.NEWS, Choi, Charles Q., September 2, 2011, Alien Life More Likely on Dune Planets, Astrobiology Magazine,weblink June 12, 2014,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20140714225000weblink">weblink 14 July 2014, usurped, The study found that, when modeled, desert planets had a much larger habitable zone than ocean planets. The same study also speculated that Venus may have once been a habitable desert planet as recently as 1 billion years ago. It is also predicted that Earth will become a desert planet within a billion years due to the Sun's increasing luminosity. 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.JOURNAL, 1304.3714, Towards the Minimum Inner Edge Distance of the Habitable Zone, Andras Zsom, Sara Seager, Julien de Wit, Vlada Stamenkovic, September 4, 2013, 10.1088/0004-637X/778/2/109, 778, 2, The Astrophysical Journal, 109, 2013ApJ...778..109Z, 27805994,

Science fiction

The concept has become a common setting in science fiction,BOOK, Touponce, William F., 1988, Frank Herbert, Intellectual Background, Boston, Twayne Publishers imprint, G. K. Hall & Co, 119, 978-0-8057-7514-3, appearing as early as the 1956 film Forbidden Planet and Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune.WEB,weblink Les, Wright, Forbidden Planet (1956), Culturevulture.net (Internet Archive), May 7, 2006,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20060507194241weblink">weblink May 7, 2006, WEB,weblink Classic Sci-Fi Reviews: Dune, Tamara I., Hladik, SciFi.com, April 20, 2008,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20080420150907weblink">weblink April 20, 2008, MAGAZINE, Jon, Michaud,weblink Dune Endures, The New Yorker, July 12, 2013, November 27, 2013, 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.BOOK, Lynch, Tom, Glotfelty, Cheryll, Armbruster, Karla, The Bioregional Imagination: Literature, Ecology, and Place, 2012, University of Georgia Press, 9780820343679, 230,weblink Dune in turn inspired the desert planets which prominently appear in the Star Wars franchise,WEB, D. A. Houdek, Star Wars is Dune,weblink October 1, 2006, including the planets Tatooine, Geonosis, and Jakku.

See also

• Exoplanet
• Ocean world

References

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