File:Ammonia World.jpg

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English: What an ammonia world, with an advanced stage of life, may look like.

Rationale for appearance:

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 may not need to deprotonate water (or ammonia) molecules to get an electron for photosynthesis. This is because the dissolved alkaline earth metals release solvated electrons that can be used directly. This could free up photosynthetic plants to use a wider range of the spectrum.

Finally ammonia clouds and ice are white just like those of water.
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Author Ittiz

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11 January 2013

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