Desert planet

Did You Know?

• The concept of desert planets became common in science fiction, appearing in the 1956 film Forbidden Planet and Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune.
• The desert planet Arrakis in the Dune franchise drew inspiration from the Middle East, particularly the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf, as well as Mexico.
• Dune inspired the desert planets in the Star Wars franchise, including Tatooine, Geonosis, and Jakku.

Habitability

A 2011 study suggested that life-sustaining desert planets might be more common than Earth-like planets, with a much larger habitable zone than ocean planets. The same study speculated that Venus may have been a habitable desert planet as recently as 1 billion years ago, and that Earth will become a desert planet within a billion years due to the Sun's increasing luminosity. A 2013 study concluded that hot desert planets without a runaway greenhouse effect can exist at 0.5 AU around Sun-like stars, requiring a minimum humidity of 1% to wash carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, while higher atmospheric pressures expand the range for liquid water.

A 2026 study using computer calculations showed that arid terrestrial planets may have unbalanced geologic carbon cycles due to runoff-limited weathering, potentially leading to loss of habitability and runaway warming. Planets with less than 10% of Earth's oceans by mass (about half the Atlantic Ocean) could not maintain a balanced carbon cycle, while the minimum threshold for such balance is around 0.2–0.5 Earth's oceans by mass.