Re: Dirty Snowball Worlds

On Feb 18, 7:10 am, sigidu...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
> On Feb 17, 6:13 pm, Logan Kearsley <chronosur...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > If the planet is geologically active, carbon dioxide
> > will build up until it causes the Snowball Earth to melt.
>
> Well, there's your answer: have the planet go snowball after volcanic
> activity has ceased.  Just have your planet be smaller than Earth, or
> have fewer radioisotopes to begin with.

Then there needs to be some way to replace the volcanic cycling of
nutrients. Volcanoes don't just release CO2, they get phosphorus and
sulfur and iron and all sorts of other useful trace elements that are
otherwise lost forever in seafloor sludge back to the surface. On a
non-snowball world with oceans, lack of geologic activity means
nutrients eventually all get leached from the surface and stuck in
unproductive seafloor sludge, and everything starves and dies.
I'm not nearly so sure how things would work on a snowball world.

-l.