Ittiz on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/ittiz/art/Ammonia-World-348018019Ittiz

Deviation Actions

Ittiz's avatar

Ammonia World

By
Published:
8.9K Views

Description

I haven't posted anything in awhile so I did a rendition of a planet with ammonia as the solvent rather than water.

The ammonia oceans, if it were just ammonia, would probably appear blue just like water. However unlike water ammonia can dissolve alkaline earth metals as if they were salt. When this happens the color changes. Dilute amounts of metal give it a an intense blue color, slightly higher concentrations give it a gold bronze color as shown here.

The reddish orange color in the atmosphere is due to oxides of nitrogen (nitrogen analogs for oxygen). Like Earth the atmosphere is primarily diatomic nitrogen. Unlike earth it contains next to no free oxygen, but has nitrogen oxidizers. Most probably nitrous oxide, but it could be nitric oxide. It's hard for me to figure out which would be more likely.

The planet would be much colder than Earth so I depicted the vegetation as black to collect more light. Unlike water worlds like Earth, plants on ammonia worlds wouldn't need to deprotonate water molecules to get an electron for photosynthesis. This is because the dissolved alkaline earth metals release free electrons which can be used directly. This would free up photosynthetic plants to use a wider range of the spectrum. This would probably free up hundreds of millions, if not a billion, years of evolution for photosynthesizing cells. However overcoming the diatomic nitrogen build up would probably more than make up for time gained.

Finally ammonia clouds and ice are white just like water.
Image size
4414x4414px 5.52 MB
© 2013 - 2024 Ittiz
Comments37
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In

This is an amazing and beautiful image of an ammonia planet. It would be a sight best obseved from space in my opinion. The smell on the surface of an ammonia planet would not be a pleasent experience in my opinion.