According to my calculations, a rocky planet, tidally locked to its Primary oin a ~2-day close orbit. One side scorching at ~1,500 K and the other deep frozen to about 20 K
In a further, cooler, orbit this would be a waterworld with oceans 8 kim deep and not even the odd volcano poking above the seas. Intense plate tectonics would lead to abundant seabed volcanism and probably marine chemically-fuelled life
In it's actual orbit, if the atmosphere (and ocean) was not blown/boiled off before tidal locking, then there would be a hemispheric icecap on the far side, with a lower layer of ice and an upper layer of frozen atmospheric gas. frequent sub-ice volcanism would melt lakes and cause giant gas eruption and geysers. Life of a sort would be possible down in this cold world of ice and fire.
Close to the terminator, the atmospheric glaciers would creep towards the sunlight and then gradually sublime into the thin cold atmosphere (probably similar pressure to Mars'). The water ice would be rock-hard and immobile.
A permanent chill thin katabatic wind would blow from the farside to the nearside, sweeping sublimed gas to the fiery heat of the sun where it would rise and return to the cold side. However, with twice Earth's diameter, a 2g gravity field, & 2-day rotation period, coriolis forces would be similar to Earth's. With a temperature difference of 1500 K from hotside to coldside, powerful weather patterns would exist - probably banded like those of a gas giant.
In some areas, zonal transport would be towards the icecap, and atmospheric snow would rain down in these areas, then slowly spread out as glaciers back to the hot side.
It is just possible that liquid water could exist somewhere in low-altitude pockets in an area of zonal transport towards the icecap, but scorching winds would pass by not far overhead!
And volcanoes would tear at the surface in an ever-changing pattern, perhaps a little like Venus or Io. Maybe permanent lava lakes would exist on the hotside, or even an exposed lava ocean hundreds of km deep, with a rocky shoreline a thousand km wide leading to the farside glaciers?
A strange world indeed...
Space/Science » in reply to A ~ 7.5 Earth-Mass Planet Orbiting the Nearby Star, GJ 876
re: A ~ 7.5 Earth-Mass Planet Orbiting the Nearby Star, GJ 876
