The Realism of Pandora from James Cameron's Avatar

In this Earth Day episode, we will be journeying to the Alpha Centauri star system to look at the multitude of planets present in the lore of James Cameron's Avatar.
00:00 - Intro
00:22 - Canonical Description
00:44 - Sentient Population
01:07 - Planetary Examination
03:53 - Star System Examination
06:35 - Parent Planet: Polyphemus
07:40 - Planetary Anomaly 01: Atmospheric Composition
10:51 - Planetary Anomaly 02: Fanciful Geology
11:51 - Planetary Anomaly 03: Small Parent Planet
12:50 - Planetary Anomaly 04: Blue Gas Giant
14:06 - Point Of Interest 01: Ringless Gas Giant
15:16 - Planetary Anomaly 05: Real-world Exoplanet System*
17:06 - Conclusion
In February of 2021, an exoplanet candidate was detected around Alpha Centauri A. If confirmed, it would lie at about 1.1 AU from its parent star with a period of approximately 1 year. It is estimated to be a jovian planet with a mass between 15 and 50 Earth masses.
In June of 2020, Proxima Centauri c was confirmed using Hubble astrometry data and its properties refined. Current data suggests it has a mass of approximately 7 Earth masses and an effective temperature of -234º C. It orbits Proxima Centauri at a distance of 1.489 AU with an eccentricity of 0.04 and a high inclination of 133º, giving it an orbital period of approximately 5.3 years. Infrared imaging of the exoplanet suggests that it may possess a vast ring system.
In May of 2020, a team of astronomers announced that using data from ESPRESSO, they detected a possible third planet with an orbital period of 5.15 days. If this is a planet, the astronomers estimate its mass to be no less than 0.29 Earth masses. If this exoplanet is confirmed, it would be the innermost planet in the star system, orbiting at a distance of about 0.03 AU.

[@matodragonespor5000]

Something I love about Pandora is that it's not just a jungle planet and that's it, like a lot of planets in science fiction. Despite it is not quite obvious in the movies, since both of them focus on specific places, other Avatar media has shown that Pandora has deserts, snowy mountains, savanas and other ecosystems and biomes.

[@tylersoto7465]

Pandora is awesome I love the rich lush life to it , if the humans were more green initiative and earth was still green and had a sustainable population like 7-8 billion, and came across this would colonize Pandora being able to support a population of 5 billion people, only mine unobtainium in places that doesn't harm the ecosystem cuz living planets don't grow on trees, and mine the other moons for resources around the gas planet and try to keep the greenery optimized as much as possible , people need a healthy strong habitat to live good lives , trying to max population number to good standard of living ratio

[@liberalsocialist9723]

@@tylersoto7465 A good idea would be to build a massive pyramid city to reduce human footprint per square feet on the planet with its own hanging gardens to supply food for the population and a thorium fusion reactor for energy. Similar concept designs have been said to house hundreds of millions of people.

[@liberalsocialist9723]

@@tylersoto7465 Water can also be harvested in the air by filtration systems that fuses the gasses of hydrogen and oxygen it sucks in to make water.

[@tylersoto7465]

@@liberalsocialist9723 yea I know what you mean, Japan actually designed a around teepee pyramid building yrs ago being hundreds of stories tall being able to fight hundred's of millions of people but it would take hundreds of years , probably build skyscraper settlements everywhere especially in places that land is naturally cleared like a grassy plains , desert or empty places , might still need to clear out areas etc, thorium or helium 3 fusion reactors would work , they probably going to need to use magnet trains to travel between cities etc or hydrogen fueled planes like that big shuttle they had , building mining operations on the moons would keep them supplied with goods etc and manufacturer products on the other moons and bring them down to Pandora to assemble and ship it to market , Pandora would be used for population housing and farming

[@elaikehler6030]

@@tylersoto7465 The laws of Eywa prohibit any mining, so i would imagine the Na’vi would not allow any mining whatsoever on Pandora so long as they could help it

[@CarlosAM1]

Imagine that some day we do something like breakthrough starshot and find life on the alpha centauri system... The chances are near to none, but my god would I love to be alive to see it.

[@64davrecon]

Breakthrough Starshot would get us killed by any intelligent beings that happened to live out that way.... Imagine their anger when a shotgun blast of objects blow through their system at significant portions of the speed of light. The energy of any of their impacts on any planets or objects in their way would be in the many megaton nuclear range, and their origin would be easily tracible back to us here on Earth. They may come visit us for some payback....

[@CarlosAM1]

@@64davrecon Such thin ships would not really do THAT much damage due to their insanely low mass, they also would very likely miss the planet entirely. Even if they do realize, they would have to be very advanced to consider actually spending so many resources to "fight back" and to actually have the tech to go fast enough as to arrive here in less than a thousand years.

[@tequestaorangejuice6673]

let me break it to you: the chances are not near to none. id say its pretty likely

[@LisaAnn777]

​@@64davrecon If they were that advanced to already have crafts in orbit that could get damaged they would be detectable from earth. unless for some weird reason they have never sent radio signals out.

[@Flugs0]

@@CarlosAM1 you were only talking about finding life somewhere in the alpha centauri system though, not in the exact constellation as it is in the movies.

[@robertcorbell1006]

One theory/hypothesis I've heard on numerous Sci-Fi and worldbuilding websites is that Pandora was once just a terrestrial world by itself until Polyphemus drifted inwards towards the host star, causing the magnetic and orbital anomalies seen in the film. The life on Pandora was early in its evolution, so it was able to quickly adapt to the relatively rapid and bizarre changes in the orbit and atmosphere brought on by being pulled in as a satellite. However, this falls apart when you realize that because of the Roche Limit, it would've been torn to shreds. On a side-note, due to both gravity and common size, a habitable moon like Pandora or Endor wouldn't likely exist. Still, this wouldn't keep a world like Andor from Star Trek from being real.

[@joenunes5966]

Star Wars, Andor is a planet within Star Wars.

[@robertcorbell1006]

@@joenunes5966 Endor is from Star Wars, Andor and its moon Andoria are from Star Trek.

[@Googleguy863]

@@joenunes5966 nope, within Star trek but ENDOR is.

[@amapnamedpam]

exomoons are a thing i believe

[@moalzaben5554]

This is why avatar is one of my favorite sci-fi movies out there because everything that James Cameron and his team have applied in it is really realistic to say the least, everything from near future technology of interstellar travel using antimatter and using a proper looking interstellar ship, choosing a realistic setting a star system that is the Solar system’s nearest stellar neighbor the Trinary star system of Alpha Centauri, like everything feels realistic in it from the helicopters to the Valkyrie shuttle to the weapons and the computers, also we have to take into account that Pandora’s is only 0.8g compared to Earth’s 1g so the alien wildlife encountered on the moon would be to what we might find in real life, the alien fauna having 6 limbs to make up for the low gravity, hell it also explains why the Na’vi have evolved into 10ft tall aliens in order to make up for the low gravity as well, and possibly the same thing with creatures like the Banshee and the Great Leonopteryx who have extra limbs in order to fly in the low gravity I think. Plus the atmosphere despite being pressurized that we don’t need space suits, but only oxygen masks to breathe because of the toxic atmosphere. Yeah everything about avatar from the alien fauna, to the moon’s gravity, to the near future technology is exactly why I love avatar for all the realistic feeling it gives and shows!

[@xmatobujnakx]

im in oposite to your opinion ...in reallity its dumb ...from helicopters like paper to military tactic and absention of modern weapons...for example drones ...we have more deadly weapons like humans from 2150

[@moalzaben5554]

@@xmatobujnakx ofc not everything is going to be realistic, true

[@peeperleviathan2839]

A more realistic co2 value would probably 12:12 be 0.26%, and higher pressure with nitrogen, I don’t know any way to avoid and xenon at 0.08% don’t know how to avoid the hydrogen sulfide for toxicity to humans

[@dionemoolman]

I realised another issue with the star system. In a close binary system, a planet must be much closer to its parent star than the other star or its orbit won’t be stable. It’s a matter of debate how much closer, but the general consensus is at least 3-5 times closer than the minimum separation of the two stars. For Alpha Centauri, this is 2-3 AU out. While this is outside both star’s habitable zones, this is is within the frost line (for reference, 2-3 AU is about the range of the asteroid belt). This means that it’s unlikely for so many gas giants to form and for there to be so many planets in the system. This doesn’t rule out Polyphemus’s existence, it does make it less likely.

[@davidjefferis4467]

The floating islands of Pandora remind me of British artist Frank Hampson's similar creations for his fictional exoplanet Cryptos, which was the backdrop for a Dan Dare space adventure. Big in the 1950s and '60s, Dan Dare was a space hero that ran on the front page of the weekly Eagle comic. Hampson won awards for his exquisitely detailed artwork.

[@AlmostEthical]

The floating mountains were very much like Roger Dean's album artwork for Yes. It's so similar that Dean sued James Cameron for a cut of the royalties it, but the the judge said no.

[@deathsinger1192]

I just love Avatar and I think what I love most is in fact the Arrival at Pandora Scene, it makes me wanna go there too so badly

[@seand.g423]

Same... But then I remember a couple of things known as Precedent and Implication...

[@tylersoto7465]

Me as well 🥺.... Oh the humanity !! 😧😦😵😵‍💫🤯

[@codywright2840]

Love this deep dive into Pandora! I love the science of Avatar and I learned a great deal from this video despite being well read on the avatar lore so thank you! My favorite thing about the human technology seen in avatar is that it doesn’t rely on sci-fi magic entirely to travel interstellar distances and used known technology to go the distance.

[@tobiaszczarnota7879]

I would like to see an episode of this series on Darwin IV from Expidition and Kerbin from Kerbal Space Program.

[@seth468]

Love your videos so far! This reminds me of MrRhexx's videos on Dungeons & Dragons lore, but Sci-fi. It would be so cool to have a series that deeply explores the lore and science (and non-science) of different sci-fi universes. As always your delivery is great, your voice is really pleasant and easy to listen to, and your video editing is professional. I'm excited for the future of your KZbin channel and I hope you keep making content!

[@thatoneguy7451]

i just hate how the "purging the natives" special project takes 1046 months to research, it is a huge delay for my scientists and i need those god damn alloys as soon as possible

[@JoJoGranum]

This was awesome and love the way you’ve analyzed this. Thank you so much for taking the time to explain the anomalies.

[@barbarahill988]

Very informative and beautifully displayed pictures

[@inkoalawetrust]

Being Greek, I find it funny that the planets on Alpha Centauri B are literally just named after our own solar systems' planets, but in Greek. Even the order of the planets and their names in that system matches our own. Considering how otherwise accurate certain aspects of the film are, especially for a mainstream billion dollar movie franchise. I'm not sure if it was a brain fart on James Cameron's part, or completely intentional lmao.

[@DeathbyProxy]

I was wondering if you were going to make a video on Pandora! Love this movie, but even as a kid I knew that the floating islands were a bit too far fetched XD

[@Kernel_linker]

They should have made the atmosphere have 30% oxygen, (unbreathable for humans) explaning how na’vi can breath the air and kind of breath human air.

[@docgonzobordel]

Really nice and interesting work ! TY !

[@maczajsci7080]

I can explain the 5.5% Xenon problem - Unobtainium must have been created from some radioisotope decay which produced the xenon - just like the argon in earth's atmosphere comes from K-40

[@totalanarchy-yt]

@@AlienPlanetology or it could've been the Unobtainium as it is a superconductive mineral and maybe raidioactive which would decay into Xenon given enough time.

[@anonymous-rb2sr]

have the filmakers ever explained why there is unoptanium on pandora? Or if it's an element or molecular compound? Basically why is there that stuff on that one random moon orbiting a gas giant, if it recieved that material from it's formation you would expect all the proxima centauri system to be laced with the stuff, including big asteroids, where, you know, they don't neet a landing shuttle, or any atmospheric equiement, or have to physically shoot bullets at a planet wide sapient hostile hive mind of megafauna, you know, just a nice big asteroid of unopanium floating in space, wouldn't that be nice? How come that doesn't exist? (beyond the "well the entire universe was made up and a pretense to have the movie about evil humans and the good blue humans aliens) I'm asking if they bothered to have an explanation that would make the universe coherent as to why they're going to pandora instead of anywhere else in that solar system where it should also be present Idk maybe it's literally just a farming issue, even with their made up unoptanium and fusion reactor technology, even by literally making s* up, their engines are STILL such garbage that they absolutely cannot afford under any circumstance to carry hydroponics farms onbord So maybe the reason they're going to pandora instead of doing asteroid mining are the literal alien vegetable gardens we see in the movie, because they couldn't afford to add a few farms or the material to build space stations of hydroponics systems abord their ships without adding 80 years to the one way trip and turning it into a multi generational travel (btw they should really get on fixing the wholehuman mortality thing, I really hope that we won't be the species that does interstellar travel before immortality, not that humanity is likely to do either, it's just that doing it in that order would be a crowning achievement of stupidty for the cheer extra effort it would require to attempt anything related to interstellar voyages without having solved mortality) (I mean the reason we die is because evolution considers that it's already done and that we are totally immortal, but making a multi generation arc ship is just so insanely ressource inefficient that it would completely prohibit any sort of interstellar travel, imagine keeping a small town with a GDP of 90% wasted labour going for 10 thousand years on a minimalist spaceship with limited ammounts of both enegery and elements and no spare parts, yep that sounds like a really succesful project) One thing I find cool about Avatar relating to that is that (not in the movie) the crew behind the movie says that in the official lore, everyone gets frozen for this specific ressource waste during the trip issue, and furthermore, if anyone randomly awakes from his cryo pod during the trip they just get shot by the security guards, because they didn't bring enough food or oxygen to feed extra people In a way it sounds like extremely poor mission planning that they don't have a safety margin of like 4% of people could malfunction and wake up and they would have extra food for them, in another way it's still a real problem and the fact it's a central aspect to mission planning (that being minimising the weight of life support by reducing all signs of life to the minimal they can, either through cryo pods or euthanasia), well that's still a welcome touch of realism and thought

[@tronam]

@@AlienPlanetology I can’t remember where I read it, but isn’t UBH-310 the supposed actual name for Unobtanium, which just seems to be the colloquial term used by non-scientists like the corpo Parker Selfridge to describe the compound.

[@horizonstechnologies5055]

Now, here after this video, they have *maybe* found a neptune-sized gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A. It is yet to be confirmed, but it's like a real life polyphemus!

[@jakubjilek3767]

Thank you for this video Kripke

[@julianodobler2782]

This was a great video indeed! I just discovered your channel. If i might ask, where did you get the info about the orbital characteristics of Pandora, as well the info regarding Polyphemus planetary values? Im a long time fan of the movie and while googling around the internet (mainly the wiki and the forums), i didnt manage to find any concrete info about such subjects. Your video was very enlightening! :)

[@xxxxxx-uh5pu]

In fairness, Pandora is the focus of Avatar rather than just another planet.

[@ssbhide123]

It looks like VFX artists were so tired making other effects that when it came to design Polyphemus, they were like, just take the Jupiter's photo and slide the Temperature all the way to the right to make it blue. They didn't even bother to remove Great Red Spot or should I say Great Blue Spot :-P

[@clutchthecinnamonsergal8493]

It’s it’s simply a case of it not mattering in the slightest outside of upsetting a few nerds…..

[@Googleguy863]

@@clutchthecinnamonsergal8493 very true 😂

[@Undine1225]

Awesome videos!

[@cg.man_aka_kevin]

Although there are some anomaly from the Avatar movie from regarding the scientific explanation of the planet, even then it is impossible for common people who watch this film to realize or notice that the Avatar movie is just a science fiction. But, I have given a very big appreciation and huge respect for James Cameron for this mind blowing movie... Can't wait to see the sequel this December!!! 🔥🔥🔥🌊🌊🌊

[@MastaRikta]

Just discovered this channel, and it's excellent stuff. Super coherent and informative, without being smug and obnoxious. I'm learning a lot about planetology! I would only push back a smidge to the planet/moon ratio point, and notes on unobtainium. Avatar lore states Pandora formed from a rare collision between the young Pandora and a Mars-size proto-planet, resulting in the conditions for the fictional room-temp superconductor to form. Our moon, which seems impossibly large for our relatively small size, formed in a similar fashion. Could that not be the case, hypothetically, with Pandora? And the superconductivity of unobtainium isn't the *cause* of the moon's exceptional magnetism, as I understand it, but rather is a consequence to Polyphemus's interaction. Polyphemus renders Pandora exceptionally magnetic, and the unobtainium floats in the same way superconductors on earth float naturally above neodymium magnets. Is that beyond possibility? Perhaps, outside some sort of impossibly powerful electromagnet, the magnetism wouldn't be enough to levitate so much mass - maybe that's the argument. But I'd like to understand the math for that.

[@zacharyzielinski8609]

This felt like a science lecture from Quaritch in an alternate timeline

[@benjaminh.9139]

Great video

[@siarnne]

It'll be interesting to hear your thoughts on the new information about Pandora and Polyphemus that's sure to come out in the Avatar sequels.

[@igbotimehopper64yearsago46]

Just found your channel 🙂 I am in love

[@robertcorbell1006]

15:16 I know this is a late follow-up, but what are your thoughts on updating some of these videos when new information comes along? Specifically, what are your thoughts on Candidate 1 discovered earlier this year?

[@creamyalmondz]

This video should have way more views than this. I expect it to increase expeditiously once Avatar 2 is released.

[@joshuamueller3206]

A planet with surface pools of heavy gases displacing the oxygen sounds like an interesting story detail. I believe we found a Jupiter sized exoplanet with a Neptune sized moon so your info on max moon size may be wrong.

[@AlmostEthical]

Great stuff. Are you planning to analyse the ecosystems too?

[@Gizzatow]

Этот ролик лучшее что я видел на ютубе о Пандоре,большое вам спасибо!

[@Kreachie]

15:37 Recently there was a possible detection of a Planet within the habitable Zone of Alpha Centauri A, By the looks of it, it looks to be a Gas Giant Similar to in Size and orbit to Polyphemus, (a bit of a coincidence,) This has yet to be Confirmed, but it looks Extremely Promising, and if confirmed looks like Alpha Centauri will be the first Multi-Star System to have Confirmed Goldilocks Planets around Multilple stars that aren’t an S-Type Orbital Pair. Also, around Alpha Centauri C (Proxima) Proxima b is more Earth-Sized than originally thought, so it’s speculated that a Third Mars-Size Planet could orbit the Star aswell. Meaning like in Avatar Lore Proxima could have 3 Planets if confirmed.

[@Kreachie]

www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/10/1017908/tantalizing-sign-habitable-zone-planet-alpha-centauri/amp/ And here’s the article about the Possible Detection of Alpha Centauri Ab.

[@seand.g423]

Tbh, Given that... well, flat-out _human fucking nature... REALLY_ hoping that that particular "coincidence" ends at the gas giant rn...

[@Googleguy863]

@@seand.g423 Sorry to say it, two years later but the detections around ACA are both not accurate. They say that the apparature wasn't precise or something causing an innaccurate detection.

[@seand.g423]

@@Googleguy863 even better.

[@Googleguy863]

i would defenitly defend Pandora, it's just a world meant to be left alone. Also the mother of science-fiction habitable moons. Overall Pandora is just the place where you wanna live (as Nav'i) and ofc on the side that faces Polyphemus to see the amazing view.

[@bartolomeestebanmurillo4459]

James Cameron has said we will be exploring different biomes in the sequels! There's strong speculation that the villainous Ash people who will be the main antagonists of the next film will be living near a Volcano and possibly a geologically active region and as such, will have access to metal and will be the most technologically advanced tribe of Na'Vi seen yet. I hope we explore the snowy region and desert clans of Na'Vi and how their respective regions have influenced their unique cultures!

[@OceanMachine_]

Gas planet colouration is a topic I find rather fascinating, but sadly I can't seem to find much good information on the subject. Do you have any good references for someone who wants to learn more?

[@Grzyb032]

Pandora's Parent Planet Polyphemus Say that 5 times fast

[@hevendor958]

*Pandora's Parent Planet Polyphemus* *Pandora's Parent Planet Polyphemus* *Pandora's Parent Planet Polyphemus* *Pandora's Parent Planet Polyphemus* *Pandora's Parent Planet Polyphemus*

[@retro-gamingandmore2052]

The craziest thing to think about is the fact that the universe is so big that probably a planet like pandora exist somewhere out there...

[@nathanaelmehlin846]

vidéo très détaillée!

[@NaniFatimana]

Subscribed

[@anonymous-rb2sr]

An issue you didn't mention witht he floating mountains that I find to be the biggest one rather than the levitation itself is the stability The mountaisn are pretty clearly based off the experiments where you put a disk of some random supraconductor above a diapole magnet and it just floats in the air, it's even locked in place So i'm fairly confident the idea for these mountaisn was just "those disks eventually stop levitiating because they heat up, but if they had those properties at the ambient temperature of the planet, then they would just float forever, and they could be massive too (magnetism works really counter intuitively with size, generally the bigger it is the stronger the magnetic fields) BUT, in those experiments the disks aren't just random supraconductors, they're specifically made disks that have intentional boreholes going through them (I don't know if they're hollow or filled with another non supercondictive material), the point is that the reason those "lock" up with the source of the magnetic field they float on, is NOT from their superconducting properties, their stability comes entirely from the fact they have holes going through them in a precise manner that allows the magnetic field lines to go through the object, that's why they stay in place But you do NOT get stability with a piece of superconductive material that is completely homogenous, only if it has microstructures to allow the magnetic field lines (whatever they actually are) to go through the object Now, when speculating about pandora, with some suspension of disbelief it's not completely impossible that those mountains would basically be pure unoptanium in very high purity, with whatever ore formation, veins of rocks, or even root system of the plants serving the same role as the intentional manufactored defects in the pieces we make float in science demonstrations, the most unlikely part is that any mineral would exist in purities significant enough to be comparable to the ratio needed to allow levitation (which should be pretty close to 100%, of course depending on the magnetic field strength) But that's not even my main issue, since this problem can have an in-universe explanation (random natural process creates natural analog of the deffects that allow magnetic lines through) No, to me the biggest issue is how tf would they not end up getting... like... pushed to one side.... after literal billions of years because it's all nice and all that they can levitate, but realistically they would just drift towards one side, arcing along the shape of the magnetic field, until they end up beaching themselves in the ground, and then just stay there as regular non floating rocks That to me is by far the biggest issue with the mountains, not that they can float, magnetism is strong enough of a force for that, but that they can seemingly just never stray off the center of their magnetic field in the eons they've been there, if we had unoptanium, we could build those montains, but I recon they would probably end up beaching themselves in a matter of days from the wind force alone, not taking into account any other extreanous force a literal giant mountain of superconducting material would be subject to while on a spinning magnetically active moon of a gas giant, that sounds like the perfect environemnt to stay undisturbed and motionless

[@thestrangecrisismalachi4121]

Oh make a planetary anomaly of Miller's planet from interstellar movie

[@mishkosimonovski23]

This Alien from Sol 3, appreciates your video. Btw. 'aCen B' planets are similar to our system.

[@lastone032085]

Pandora is tidally locked which means it would be volcanic as fuck if it were real. Not tropical. Also the creatures in Pandora have red blood, meaning they have iron in their blood which means everything should die if it got anywhere near the hallelujah mountains because the red blood cells would pool and cause a stroke almost immediately due to the magnetic pull.

[@mautheb1203]

Hello, I just saw Avatar 2. And once more I am asking myself, how the day/night cycle would be on pandora. Especially after seeing the “eclipse” in this second movie.

[@dogmancito]

Shouldn't Pandora have massive tides?

[@donovandelaney3171]

Human lungs have the ability to adapt to different types of air. So it wouldn't take long for the humans to breathe Pandora's air.

[@KadenSlinker-cw6cl]

Hello, I am just wondering what music you are using in the video?

[@KadenSlinker-cw6cl]

@@AlienPlanetology Thank you

[@deshaughnmolette9205]

I recently created a fictional Earth-like moon that's the same size as Pandora, and it also has a nitrogen rich atmosphere with low oxygen, plus it's an icy and frozen world but still habitable only mostly in the frozen oceans and some life on glaciers like penguins, seals, etc.

[@Amit_Gupta216]

Life on pandora could have evolved to use hydrogen sulfide as a energy source . As the channel biblaridian also mentioned in his alien biospheres series .

[@brauljo]

3:46 Based for including kelvins

[@cockpeatdarkhole6909]

At 12:20 - See the found of Gliese 1549 (or so), a Gasgiant- size Moon in a Orbit of a bigger Gasgiant 😉

[@dontforgetyoursunscreen]

6:28 interesting that the planets of alpha centuri in avatar are Greek deities rather than the roman deities of our solar system

[@bigcazza5260]

imagine if star wars had this level of detail in its world building (disney era, i know legends was close). just imagine it, because we wont get it kek

[@bigcazza5260]

@@AlienPlanetology the funniest thing is disney would make a LOT more money selling those lore books than they would with any sequel related stuff. best thing to come from disney was letting filoni spread his wings, filoni should be the creative executive considering that george lucas trained him "in the ways of the force"

[@bigcazza5260]

@@AlienPlanetology didnt know how to spell favreau thats the only reason he didnt cop a shout out lmao

[@Amit_Gupta216]

Can you please tell me that why Pandora has to go through daily solar eclipses as shown in Avatar the way of water. Can you please tell me.

[@Amit_Gupta216]

@@AlienPlanetology thanks alot.

[@dumigamez397]

We're gonna get a lot of juicy information when James Webb observes Alpha Centauri this summer. I'm dying to get confirmation of Candidate 1 :).

[@dumitrulangham1721]

Imagine if we actually find a real Pandora moon!

[@mikeraptorh6888]

It’s possible to find pandora as seen in the movies but it definitely won’t have na’vi, but the animals could be possible

[@seand.g423]

@@dumitrulangham1721 I like to think I have the basic self-awareness to try _not_ to imagine that...

[@hevendor958]

*though, we should cross our fingers, considering the History of Alpha Centauri of their farshare of Ghost Planets*

[@marufulislam4311]

plz will you make similar videos technology humans used to travel to this panet. as seen in the movie

[@Sciguy95]

Why would unobtanium and it's effects be taking too much artistic liberty for science fiction due to it being only theoretically possible and highly unlikely when the majority of sci Fi is filled to the brim with stuff that is just ridiculously impossible?

[@markstahl1464]

What’s the name of the background music, or where is it from?

[@markstahl1464]

@@AlienPlanetology Thanks! I'll check it out :D

[@greyideasthetheliopurodon4640]

Is it possible Pandora was caught by polyphemus rather than it forming around it?

[@greyideasthetheliopurodon4640]

@@AlienPlanetology I see, thanks

[@greyideasthetheliopurodon4640]

@@AlienPlanetology Sure thing

[@amanofnoreputation2164]

@@AlienPlanetology The inward migration problem could be alleviated by orbital resonances with the other moons. Callisto is in such a resonance with the other major Jovian moons and is also suspected to have been a captured object, but this is less plausible in light of eccentricity of Pandora's orbit.

[@anonymous-rb2sr]

@@AlienPlanetology Do we even know enough about protoplanetary formation to be able to say that? At the end of the day it's all captured, even if it was still small dust and ice particulates creating ring around the gas giant that later became planetoids, it's still matter captured from the overall protoplanetary disk which itself is just basically the averaged out remamnent of the specific planetary nebula's moment of inertia (if you watch the simulations of these things disks always form from a collapse, it's basically all the stuff that misses the center but comes close to it, and it's a disk instead of a bubble because the particles hit each other and cancel out any velocity that can be cancelled, hence it becomes flat, and the very flat plane of orbit is literally the principal axis of rotation of the cloud the star came from) but my point here is that we basically have no data, we have no idea how the solar system formed, we have a dozen of random rock samples that we're more or less clueless about the age of, then we have a bunch of computer simulations, and then some extremely bad pictures of exoplanetary disks which are basically just snapshots considering the time these things take So do we even come close to having enough data to speculate about planetary formation one, and two does it even matter if the matter that would later orbit a gas giant was captured in cloud form or in planetoid form? it's captured from the same disk the planet itself came from either way (btw I am only halfway through the video when I typed this this is not me saying any argument for why pandora's orbital characterisitic would be impossible is bad, I literally haven't heard that part of the video yet, I'm just talking about the degree of confidence for something we have basically zero data for that I find a bit too much)

[@anonymous-rb2sr]

I've watched the rest of the video, that just makes me ask why the filmakers didn't just say that the planet that they made up had a much higher mass if that was such a problem maybe they just weren't aware, then again I'm not completely convinced that's an actual thing either, same problem as with my post before, the ridiculously small sample size, gas giants can't have moons bigger than 1/10kth of their mass? Based on what, the 4 we have in our system? lol Seriously where does that statement/statistic come from, we have only a handful of exomoon detection, and the data for those is so bad they they could all very well be false positive (seriously the level of data we have for our telescopes is a complete joke the entire field is a circus, you would need several thousand JWSTs to have basic workable data, not one) Anyways what other source of data is there, there's 4 in our solar system, there's a few dozen exoplanets with data so bad we're not seing 80% of their systems and most of them are probably just noise that an algorithm decided was data, what else is there, simulations? They're probably the most accurate data point out of the three which is ironic considering they don't exist, but the results of a simulation will completely depend on how you set it up+the model limitation compared to the complexity of reality, and that's if you have the laws of physics right, and spoiler alert, we don't, there's literally not one model humans have made that can even correctly predict/map the movement of our closest stars, general relativity is just like a big gaslighting prank the theoretical physicist community has been playing on the rest of mankind So with all that I seriously doubt there even exists any data that would enable us to say what the rules of thumbs of gas giant planet to moon ratios are, we had good mostly accurate measurements of the orbit of what goes on in our solar system, with a sample size of 4 (out of the literal trillionsillions of gas giants in one galaxy) so it's not exactly useful data, beyond being able to say that what we see in our own solar system is theoretically possible (yay! making progress here!) I mean just look at the frequency of binary systems everywhere, from all the binary stars (stars are like the one thing we can actually observe so we have good data for those), to in our solar system charon/pluto, and even earth/the moon, so to me it seems like the parent body to orbital ratio is more of a random spectrum that goes from much much smaller to smaller to about the same size to bigger, there's probably widely different frequency for all of those ratios, with valleys of rarity due to specific emergent effects of orbital mechanics and whatnot, but just assuming that there is one such currently unknown process which destroys any system where the mass discrepency is not big enough, (but only for gas giants because we've seen tons of both bigger and smaller objects with similarly sized orbital pairs), well that assumption is just completely ridiculous Again I'm sure there is a nice frequency graph for all the different size ratios, but from that to saying "well achually because in our solar system with our 4 planets none have massive moons, that means gas giants just can't have big moons, period", my reaction to that is what are you even doing

[@cainhicks7509]

a Centauri A is just are solar system but Greek names instead of the Roman ones in the avatar universe

[@admiralfluffy42]

Once you said the distance, I said oh no

[@Meggsie]

I swtg I saw the same blue Jupiter back drop in Mass Effect

[@Amit_Gupta216]

There is one hypothesis that how Pandora formed around a low mass gas giant is that in the past the young Regil Kantaurus star system there were many more planets in the system there was a huge terrestrial world (super earth) but when Polyphemus began to drift inwards in the start system it destroyed the terrestrial world by its gravity. The remaining debri resulted the moons of Polyphemus to grow and become too large like Pandora. Since the planet destroyed by Polyphemus was a rocky world the moons of the gas giant are rocky.

[@hevendor958]

*though however, there are indeed consequences when it comes to a Hypothesis trying to explain an Earth-sized Moon orbiting a small Gas Giant with multiple other Jovian-like Moons*

[@olgalemos4831]

can you do one about yavin 4

[@robertcorbell1006]

Yavin being a brown dwarf on the edge of the outer habitable zone of a larger binary system similar to the P-type that Tatooine orbits would make more sense than a Jovian gas planet. However, the moon size thing as mentioned in this video is still an issue unless the debris early in planetary formation was of a particularly large amount.

[@robertcorbell1006]

@@AlienPlanetology The Antar system from the extended canon is actually very similar to Yavin in size and function. It also features a more likely world that is shrouded in darkness most of its year, causing the life there to have evolved to live in the dark except for a tiny window of time due to the fairly eccentric orbit of Antar IV. As for why any complex life such as the sapient Gotal would even have eyes is still beyond me.

[@robertcorbell1006]

The fact I even know about Antar IV and the Gotal is due to how there once used to be trivia things about every single alien and both their species and homeworld for the Cantina scene. The goat-like (hehe, "Gotal") is the race the one guy was in the back corner behind Han Solo. He's seen knocking back drinks with his arm around his buddies: the human astronaut and the human-sized fly. All while the nearby hookers from several races split a hookah. And the guys whose costumes would be reused for the Zaranites in Star Trek: The Motion Picture are playing the now-iconic Cantina Song in the background.

[@CyclopsRat]

WHAT is this dude's accent? (Fantastic video, I was just puzzled by that while watching lol)

[@Drikkerbadevand]

yeah I was thinking the same with the atmospheric composition. they could have just made it like 0,5% CO2, a noble gas of 5% is fine, but why xenon when they could have chosen helium, neon or argon, which are much less dense.

[@_Omega_Weapon]

If it's tidally locked, how then could they have a night/day (light/dark) cycle in the regions they show??

[@thatoneguy7451]

its tidally locked to the planet its orbiting, meaning one side is always facing the planet and the other is always facing away (it can still have a day/night cycle)

[@_Omega_Weapon]

@@thatoneguy7451 Only the side facing away from the planet it orbits could have a day/night cycle then. Not the side that always faces the host planet. So one side is under constant darkness.

[@thatoneguy7451]

@@_Omega_Weapon It might depend on the size of the planet and distance from it, but idk. I'm no expert in this regard.

[@GeneraluStelaru]

@@_Omega_Weapon It can certainly have a night-twilight cycle, and with the gas-giant's reflectiveness the period of light could be extended significantly.

[@lioshin]

11:51 Pandora's high mass compared to Polyphemus could be caused by Polyphemus forming much further out in the system then Pandora, Then migrating inward and capturing Pandora in its gravity well as a moon, similar to Triton in our solar system.

[@titan-1802]

but then, this comes in to a lot of problems. firstly, Pandora being captured by Polyphemus would disrupt most of the Pre-existing Spherical Moons of the Gas Giant, and would either collide with Pandora or Polyphemus, or be ejected out into the System, this can also result in Pandora actually failing to host any Habitability nor life on its Surface if it was captured by Polyphemus

[@carylmccarley6765]

I'm not into the Space and galaxy and all the planets stuff and don't understand 🤔 any of this that the guy's is talking. But it is sounding very interesting.

[@gearybell]

hey alien of sol 3 my request can you do a planetary anomaly sanghelios from halo

[@gearybell]

really like of vide planetary anomaly halo sanghelios from halo franchise

[@neytiritetskahamoatite7688]

You got it wrong on surface gravity: It's 7 instead of 8 , so 7.77 m/s^2

[@neytiritetskahamoatite7688]

@@AlienPlanetology Np, i'm glad you saw it. And i really loved the doc. 🥰On 1:50 Tidal heating: A tidal lock'ed Moon keeps the same face to the Polyphemus, therefore there is no mareic stress from the Polyphemus, since the potential energy is stable related to Polyphemus. Related to the other moon's and to the Alpha Cen.-A star, yeah, there is some mareic stress which heats Pandora 🙂 The rest of the story here seems to be accurate : the atmosferic issues, the geomagnetic problems and so on. I'm a chemist engineer, and i thought the same about H2S gas. It's awkward to be stable at that percentage on a planet full of life and ritch O2 atmosphere. Same for the CO2. 18% on a planet teaming with life.? Mmmm : NO! 😁 BTW: Did u calculated sea lvl pressure considering Pandora's gravity? Officially is 0.9 atm although it has a higher molar mass :) I don't know why they didn't mention the composition of O2 and N2 separately, and some other details to know exactly the atmospheric composition :)

[@neytiritetskahamoatite7688]

@@AlienPlanetology That book should be more precise then, not the fandom :) Ok. If u have the complete atmospheric gas composition of Pandora , please share it with us , thx 🤗😇

[@bazoo513]

These were really minor nitpicks, compared to the liberties other SciFi movies take. (BTW, what most people analyzing the movie miss is that the main feature of "Jake the Savior" is not that he is a white human "civilized" male, but that he is a foreigner. He did something unthinkable to Na'vi: he asked Eywa (Na'vi's version of Gaia) to take sides in order to save children. To Na'vi Eywa, as a giver and protector of life and a symbol ove unity, was beyond such low interventions, but not to Earthly Jake.) As for the sequels, I would like to see less battles and more environment, and see my species in a bit more favorable way. Let's use out technology to mine unobtainium in polar regions inaccessible to native population.

[@bazoo513]

@@AlienPlanetology Well, of course, but let's cut Cameron some slack: every movie of this kind needs their MacGuffin. Perhaps something biological would have been a better choice, though, like Herbert's "spice".

[@innermostlayers6865]

What are sources for your conclusions ? Do you have some professional background?

[@SgtThiel]

that's fancy. I thought a moon this size could not have an orbit this short

[@anonymous-rb2sr]

well there are binary black holes with orbits of a few seconds so we're not reaching any upper extreme here

[@liamwescott9264]

There is another thing about the floating mountains and the Unobtanium that lets them float due to it being a room-temperature superconductor. Any magnetic fields strong enough to hold up mountains of that size would almost certainly have been more than strong enough to rip proto-Pandora apart and prevent it from ever forming in the first place. That is just a guess on my part, but if it has basis in reality, then it would mean no Pandora and therefore no Na'vi.

[@anonymous-rb2sr]

depends on how the magnetic field is formed, it seems very local, magnetic bubbles of a few kilometers instead of a giant planet wide magnetic field like we have on earth (or else those montains would be floating in the radiation belt all the way in space lol) also the unoptanium probably loses it's properties when hot enough, like for eample LAVA, you know the state things are in when entire planets crash into each other at orbital speed, quite a lot of kinetic energy turning into heat there so you wouldn't have any reaction magnetism in the early formation/lava ball stage, they would begin to react to the magnetic fields much later once they cooled off to "room temperature" temperatures, which is a lot colder than lava when comparing the two my biggest issue with them is that they wouldn't be stable, even if they could levitate they would just fall off to the side until they hit the ground, then just become regular non-floating rocks

[@brauljo]

1:18 4.29 Rg 1:21 5.48 Mg/m³ 1:38 204 Mm 3:46 5 K higher than Earth's 3:56 41.3 Pm 4:10 1.68 Tm; 5.33 Tm 4:34 643 Tm; 1.9 Pm 4:56 242.8 Qg; 107.28 Mm; 651 ZW 4:59 239 Qg 5:02 104 Mm 5:07 3 kK 5:21 2187 Qg; 851.1 Mm; 581.5 YW 5:36 849 Mm 5:40 58 hK 5:43 582 YW 6:00 1804 Qg; 600.53 Mm; 191.48 YW 6:07 1810 Qg 6:10 598 Mm 6:15 52 hK 6:17 191 YW 6:46 570 Rg 6:58 1.08 Mg/m³ 7:07 209.44 Gm 15:44 6.6 Rg 15:57 5.49 Rg 16:24 7.8 Rg 16:26 6.82 Mm 16:44 36 Rg

[@Seoseupainaotivesseidoembora]

Talk about the planet of avatar TLA (AANG) and why the planet is ridiculous small to be like the show presents it

[@user-xg4hr1od5r]

Are there any radioactive issues on the planet pandora? The polyphemus planet will radiate powerful radiation like Jupiter

[@gearybell]

hey alien of sol 3 my request can you do a planetary anomaly algolis from halo

[@themadoneplays7842]

you know I could probably exp0lain why planetary anomoly 3 may not be a problem: it may be another planet trhat was captured by polythemus during the solar systems formation and perhaps was a bit larger before some of it got sucked into its parent planet.

[@themadoneplays7842]

@@AlienPlanetology Still its not entirely impossible. Our knowledge on such matters is still tiny compared to the possibilites still open in our universe, we base our science on what we have seein in our own tiny window of knowledge. I mean just bvecause we have not seen a world like pandora yet in our POV doesnt mean it cant happen, yes unlikely but not impossible. Hey if we can have worlds where it rains rubies and sapphires or a pink planet I think the universe hasd even more interesting possibilites then we think. Yes we still have copnstant factors like gravity and such but there is even a planet that defies our current laws of physics too so the realm of possibilities still remains fairly open.

[@themadoneplays7842]

@@AlienPlanetology I am referring to Gliese 436b and it has been observed to have a quirk to it, it has solid ice yet is close to its parent sun and said ice should be vapor. Granted there is a reason for this according to what I read its gravity is so strong that said ice cannot turn into steam. Love this exoplanet, its kind of awesome :D I also really like Gj-504b the pink planet though its probably gonna be gray like jupiter once it finally comes to form.

[@xandersfs2346]

There could easily be many planets in the system because of how bad we are at looking for them. I am super hyped because the James Webb will be taking a look at the alpha Centauri system and using post processing would be able to see a planet as small as 0.3 earth radii Also, Polyphemus could be a sudarsky class 2 gas giant with water vapor clouds. It could still be blue, just a bit lighter of a blue

[@titan-1802]

Speaking of a Sudarsky Class Gaseous Planets, the Blue Moon's parent Planet in Extraterrestrial is stated to be a Water Cloud Jovian Planet, and if i remember, it appeared Blue in the Documentary with a Ring System.

[@xandersfs2346]

Water in its non-condensed form produces a blue shade, if the clouds are low enough and the planet has a high water vapor density atmosphere you could still have a blue color, not a deep blue but a shade of Blue none the less

[@xandersfs2346]

Actually, I’ve brushed up on my chemistry a bit lately. according to almost every chemistry website and class, and I quote, “water vapor is completely transparent but appears white in clouds and steam due to condensation.” If there are no particles in air for condensation to form on or the air maintains above Boiling point for its pressure the water vapor remains perfectly clear. However water vapor does scatter light, scattering blues less than reds just like in the earth’s atmosphere. A white cloud layer below 60 or more kilometers of clear water vapor will appear a very light blue from space because more blue light will be reaching the “surface” than other wavelengths. The white clouds reflect the slightly bluer light without significantly changing it’s color and the scattering process would also occur on the way back up. This would cause more blue light to return from the “surface” to space giving the white clouded planet a blue hue.

[@xandersfs2346]

So in direct response to your previous response, water vapor is always near perfectly clear

[@7stiano123]

If it is tidally locked how can it be habitable

[@MaciejowPL]

Pandora is one of better developed worlds in Sci-Fi but about that question in the end, I believe in the theory of Dark Forest so no betrayal of my own race for it would mean my own extinction

[@dumitrulangham1721]

😮😮😮 it interesting if we find a real Pandora exomoon

[@seand.g423]

And absolutely tragic soon enough after...

[@patrickbliss9264]

11 days for a year is just sad.

[@Ax6Creepyxxd]

To me the most surprising thing about this planet is the time it takes to orbit it's parent planet. I was just so convinced about bigger orbits needing to take longer to complete, but i guess that's just not true sometimes? My mind said "The moon is on a much smallet orbit around the earth and yet it still takes 30 or so days to complete one, so Pandora just doesn't have a chance to have a 26 orbit at such a scale!"... am i missing something?

[@Ax6Creepyxxd]

@@AlienPlanetology Wow!! Such an interesting fact, one would expect that bigger planets would get moons with even wider orbits than that of Luna. I was aware of the fact that higher mass planets needed higher orbital velocities, but got stuck thinking that those orbits would also get bigger... i see the flaw in my logic now, it all makes sence!!!

[@MightyRob1]

The one thing that bothered me when I first saw this movie is that virtually all life forms on Pandora follow a DNA blueprint of six legs and multiple eyes yet the Navi are built like humans with four limbs, etc

[@hatebreeder999]

Yes that makes them out of place and unrealistic. Very humanoid. I think Arival movie potrays aliens much more realistically as they have radial symetry (heptapods) and their language is truly alien

[@randomly_random_0]

Just wait for Avatar 4 amd 5 where James Cameron will reveal that their diety EYWA is an AI and the Navi were advanced back then but Eywa saw this as destructive so s"she" made them back to primitive living

[@vbostrom]

What is your source for Pandora being tide locked?

[@vbostrom]

@@AlienPlanetology You can get lock times greater than the age of the Alpha Centauri system with a distant enough orbit (14 lunar distances and a moment of inertia of about 2.2*10^37 kg m^2 results in about 8 billion years lock time) and Baxter's book, supposedly based on Avatar canon sources, says that Pandora is not tide locked.

[@vbostrom]

@@AlienPlanetology And at 1.4 AU from Alpha Centauri A, 14 LD would be well outside the Hill 'sphere' and would escape. I'm not sure how much emphasis to put onto some of the visual effects, in one scene Polyphemus is seen not touching the horizon, and in other scenes it is on the horizon, which does imply that Pandora is not tide locked, or the camera viewpoints are significant distances across the surface of Pandora. Other things I wasn't sure how to deal with: Alpha Centauri B would provide most of the mass and angular momentum of the system, and the system invariable plane is going to be pretty close or right on ACB's orbital plane - in our system nearly all major masses orbit within a couple of degrees of inclination from the invariable plane, so I would presume that Polyphemus and Pandora approximately share that plane (~ 79 degrees inclination and 205 degrees longitude of the ascending node in ICRF framing), yet Pandora is said to have a 29 degree axial tilt - and you can see this as Venture Star approaches Pandora in the first movie, Pandora is rotating about an axis that is vertical to the screen and the day-night terminator is tilted 15-20 degrees or so, so Pandora's orbit around Polyphemus is either also inclined by that amount, or Polyphemus will rock north and south in the sky as Pandora completes its orbits (which would also make it not really tide locked, or perhaps tide locked but with north-south libration). So I generally come down to the constraints being: Pandora's axis of rotation must be parallel with Pandora's normal of orbital angular momentum, Pandora is tide locked, Pandora's normal to the orbital plane must be 29 degrees from Polyphemus's normal to the orbital plane, and Polyphemus is coplanar with ACB. I'm not sure I really like the idea that Polyphemus's plane and Pandora's plane are so far apart, though. I've been trying to sort out what is canon and what is conjecutre and it hasn't been easy to sort out what the movie itself has in mind.

[@JoshTGW]

TBH, Pandora would beyond impossible, especially around Alpha Centauri A and B for one reason, the binary pair itself. One star basically would not let another keep a planet and even then with a orbital period of 80 years between them and how close they approach one another, their perihelion to one another, would not even allow any planets to form or have time to do so as the area around the two stars orbitting one another relatively close would disturb the orbit of anything orbiting close by either ejecting it from the system or one or both of the stars swallowing the object(s). Proxima Centauri is fortunate to be orbitting far enough away that the gravitaional influence of the binary pair isn't enough to disturb the orbits of its planets.

[@titan-1802]

Now this doesn't really Rule out Polyphemus' Existence (depending to where it sits within Alpha Centauri A's Habitable Zone).

[@addisonsmith7949]

What I am saying here The gas giants gravitational pole is causing the rocks to float

[@igbotimehopper64yearsago46]

@@AlienPlanetology you have a point

[@McMurchie]

If I was a big leader of Earth, i'd insist no resources be taken without agreement by the sentient parties on the planet...id' hope we have learned a few things about our own sordid history on doing the wrong thing.

[@HeriSuranegara]

just find out that the day and night on Pandora is not from its rotation but by the eclipse of parent planet

[@Philip-1]

8:03 Instead of Xenon, I'd have introduced *Sulfur Hexafluoride* as what increases Pandora's atmospheric density. SF6 is colorless, odorless, non-flammable, non-toxic and practically every bit as inert as Xenon, if not more so. SF6 is even slightly denser than Xenon, and 5 times denser than air.

[@Philip-1]

@@AlienPlanetology SF6 does occur naturally, but I'm not sure how. The man-made process of exposing S8 to F2 is relatively simple so it's not a stretch to imagine something similar happening in nature somewhere in the cosmos. With a rather high melting point of 209K (~50K higher than Xenon), there could be entire comets made of the stuff. Perhaps the bigger question concerns the natural abundance in the universe of each constituent. Fluorine is ~1000 times as abundant as Xenon, and Sulfur is the 10th most abundant element we know of. At least the constituents of SF6 would not have the rarity-stigma that Xenon suffers. Many thanks for this fascinating video. 👍

[@Windows11Guy798]

Well oxygen has a bluish color

[@Windows11Guy798]

@@AlienPlanetology uh pandora is actually 11,447km

[@joaoguilhermealvesdossanto9308]

Does the moon Pandora orbit the giant gas planet Polyphemus clockwise or counterclockwise?

[@joaoguilhermealvesdossanto9308]

Thank you! ❤

[@joaoguilhermealvesdossanto9308]

It's just that I'm Brazilian, I speak only Portuguese and I always watch this video of Pandora with subtitles.

[@joaoguilhermealvesdossanto9308]

I'm just going to ask a few questions, because I'm passionate about astronomy and I'm writing a book about astronomy. Pandora only shows the same side to Polyphemus? Is there 26 hours in a day on Pandora? and does it take the same amount of time to circle Polyphemus completely? I'm using the translator.

[@joaoguilhermealvesdossanto9308]

Sorry for bothering you!

[@addisonsmith7949]

I am just saying gravity Kuchar the islands to float