in:Planets, Celestials
Outdoor world with a human-breathable atmosphere and indigenous life. The atmosphere is far from chemical equilibrium as a result.
— In-Game Description
An Earth-like World is a type of Terrestrial Planet that has an active water-based chemistry and indigenous carbon-water-based life. As the name indicates, the planet Earth in the Sol system is the standard by which all bodies of this type are compared. Naturally-occurring Earth-like Worlds are very rare, and they also occasionally support indigenous intelligent species at various stages of development. Universal Cartographics offers some of its highest payouts for discovery and mapping data of previously uncharted Earth-like Worlds.
Humans possess the technology necessary to terraform certain Terrestrial Planets, including Earth-like Worlds with native ecosystems that cannot sustain human crops and livestock or may be harmful to humans in some respect without protective equipment, and artificially induce human-acceptable conditions in a matter of decades. All terraformed Earth-like Worlds are located within the Core Systems. In the early days of interstellar colonisation, terraforming destroyed numerous alien species, such as the mudlarks of Capitol, as well as entire ecosystems, but in the 34th century, terraforming and colonisation of Earth-like Worlds are both heavily regulated by strict environmental protection laws.
Notable Earth-Like Worlds[]
| System | Planet | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sol | Earth | Natural | Birthplace of humanity, previous capital of the Federation |
| Sol | Mars | Terraformed | Current capital of the Federation |
| Tau Ceti | Taylor Colony | Terraformed | The first extrasolar Earth-like World terraformed and colonised by humanity |
| Achenar | Capitol | Terraformed | Capital of the Empire |
| Alioth | Turner's World | Terraformed | Capital of the Alliance |
| Lave | Planet Lave | Natural | Former capital of the Galactic Cooperative |
| Shinrarta Dezhra | Founders World | Terraformed | Headquarters of the Pilots Federation |
Natural generation[]
Quite a few ELWs exist in the galaxy without any human intervention. Stellar Forge is able to generate ELWs given its physics simulations and a bit of algorithmic fudging:[1] they mostly generate around main-sequence stars, but exceptions can occur and are prized discoveries among the community.[2] ELWs are especially valuable to Universal Cartographics. CMDRs can use some features of Stellar Forge, such as boxel (subsector) nomenclature, to find stars with similar features and hopefully similar planets.[3] There are also ELWs manually placed into the game, but left uninhabited. Trappist-1 has one such ELW.
ELWs are generated to have:
- An oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere with variable pressure (approximately 0.5–4.5 atm), but with the partial pressure of fixed at 0.21 atm, the same as Earth's
- In real life, nitrogen has an anesthetic effect, even at air pressure. Humans living on a 4.5 atm ELW would be permanently intoxicated – not bad for a Tourist economy. On the other hand, low-pressure worlds can be a bit more productive.
- As the description says, presence of any oxygen in the atmosphere is "far from chemical equilibrium", because oxygen must be continually generated to compensate for its tendency to react with things. This implies that every ELW has plenty of photosynthetic life.
- Gravity of 0.2–1.8 g
- Average temperature around 250–400 K. Water might exist in smaller patches at the extremes.
Gallery[]
Capitol in Achenar
