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TIL of COCONUTS-2b, a giant gas planet that takes over 1 million years to orbit around its star (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/til@lemmy.ca
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[–] 1 point 3 years ago (2 children)

I wonder how life would evolve on a planet like that. Could evolution account for things like seasons that last hundreds of thousands of years? Or would entire species rise and fall between each and every ice age?

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Did you see the orbit semi major axis? That gas gaint is so far away from the star it's probably orbit even outside host star's heliosphere. For reference, pluto's semi major is 39.48AU, and this coconuts-2b is 7506AU.

    The star is about one-third the mass of the Sun,

    So forget anything like receiving enough energy from sun to have any chemical reaction going. It would be too cold for anything organic.(in our standard to even jitter around.)

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Well yeah, I didn't mean that planet specifically. Just one that took a million years to orbit their star. I'm sure there are probably more out there in the same situation,maybe even with a larger sun and in the goldilocks zone and not a gas giant.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    yeah, in that sense those creature would be more like plants? since their time flow would be much much slower than our zapping around planet. They would probably look dead to us and we wouldn't know since would probably take 100 earth year to say "ah" in their normal speed. lol

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