Celestia Forums

I'm making an addon right now and one of my planets, Ferrum Oxidis, is tidally locked to a red dwarf. The planet is close enough to the star that large parts of its surface are molten. The lava covering the surface is mostly rock and liquid iron. The iron comes from large concentrations of iron oxide on the planet. Other worlds in the system also have large amounts of iron oxide. Is it possible for the heat from Ferrum Oxidis' parent star, combined with volcanic gases in the atmosphere, to separate the iron from the oxygen?

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The oxidation of iron is one of the things which cause free oxygen to be rare on planets without life. Oxides of iron help to make Mars look red. While the situation where iron and oxygen are both plentiful in the same region of a protoplanetary nebula might be rare, that just means such planets don't happen freqently, not that they don't happen at all. Stories are interesting when they are about things we don't often encounter. They're usually less entertaining when they're about things we see every day.

But what John is saying is that un-rusted iron is more common than rusted iron -- you don't need to explain how it got that way.