Darwin IV
| Darwin IV | |
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Darwin IV
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| Planet type | terrestrial |
| Created by | Wayne Barlowe |
| First appearance | Expedition (1990) |
Darwin IV is a fictional planet and the subject of Wayne Barlowe's book Expedition and the television special, Alien Planet, based on Expedition. Although the details of the discovery and exploration of Darwin IV differ in the two presentations, both are essentially the same in their depiction of the planetary environment and its native life-forms, whose abundance and variety prompt the name Darwin.
In Alien Planet, a more basic scenario is presented where a ship called the Von Braun is sent to explore an alien world outside the solar system. The Von Braun is sent to a binary star system about 6.5 light-years from Earth. At 20% of the speed of light (0.2c), it takes about 32.5 years to travel to this system. Upon arrival it goes into orbit around Darwin IV, the Von Braun deployed the Darwin Reconnaissance Orbiter to scan the planet from orbit. The Von Braun also dispatches three identically shaped lighter-than-air probes to the planet surface. These three probes are:
In both stories the low gravity and dense atmosphere allow for aerial organisms that would be impossible on Earth.
The binary star system best fitting the described one above is Luhman 16, a binary system of brown dwarfs 6.59 light-years away, though it is questionable whether a brown dwarf could actually support life.
It seems likely that Darwin IV was covered with large oceans a few million years ago, just like Earth. But because of important climatic changes, the oceans evaporated and most of the ocean water became part of the atmosphere of the planet. The continents are now mountain chains and plateaus, while the ocean floor has become a large, open plain of deserts and savannah. Thus, most of the creatures who now inhabit Darwin IV are descendants of land-dwelling animals
The dense atmosphere is full of clouds and meteorologic activity and the plains sometimes resemble "weather oceans". Most of the water is found in the atmosphere, but there are also millions of tons of frozen water in the regions of the poles, and big lakes and rivers where the 'pocket-forests' reside.
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