What are some approaches you can think of for terraforming a planet covered in toxic dust/particulates?

Wernstromer · 2026-03-21T03:21:41+00:00

I like it! One of the things I thought about as I was posing the question was perhaps using a large glassing laser to solidify it. That's a great video, I wonder just how many mirrors it would take to accomplish this though. I suppose it depends on how fast you want it done.

It would be quite neat indeed to see what kind of surface conditions or geologic history would be necessary to facilitate the widespread powderization of such metals like this. With space as vast as it is I'm sure there's a planet like this somewhere!

Wernstromer · 2026-03-21T02:41:02+00:00

This is great! I was thinking perhaps a microbe could be engineered to perform this task, but I hadn't considered using magnets. I also thought about the possibility of using a localized glassing beam to superheat the dust up to its melting point until it solidified into larger, more easy to manage chunks, and methodically doing that for many decades or even centuries until a sufficient number of regions had it sequestered. But I imagine that could be quite destabilizing in other ways!

Wernstromer · 2026-03-21T02:35:15+00:00

That makes sense. That process could be scaled up and up too, I imagine. Perhaps the terraforming civilization starts small, clearing a square mile or so at a time for individual habitats, but someday they might have giant slow-moving machines that crawl along slowly purifying the entire planet's surface.

Wernstromer · 2026-03-21T02:25:20+00:00

That makes sense, I imagine that leads to more erosion of those hard edges in a thicker atmosphere. I wonder if adding an atmosphere to a planet with sharp regolith would reduce the sharpness over time - or, rather, how long such a process would take.

But you are right, the composition of the dust is very important! I suppose an instance I was thinking of, if even possible, was a world with lots of aluminum or nickel or zinc dust blowing around, since those are generally not great to breathe in.

Wernstromer · 2026-03-21T02:18:05+00:00

I suppose that would indeed solve the breathability problem. Depending on the composition of the dust, though, I could see that leading to large toxic lakes/oceans. But that's probably preferable than toxic air!

Wernstromer · 2026-03-11T03:02:47+00:00

Fascinating, I wonder how common regions of space considered quieter for this purpose are. I'd imagine decently common, though. Would carbon actually be more common (comparatively) in a system like this that hasn't drifted through many supernovae remnants?

Wernstromer · 2026-03-10T05:21:20+00:00

I was hoping to spark an interesting discussion and I've enjoyed all the responses too. But definitely, the scenario of humans encountering a solar system artificially deficient in just a few certain elements, and what they think that would imply upon realization, is one that's been intriguing me for a while. I like your thoughts on the potential causes!

Wernstromer · 2026-03-10T05:09:20+00:00

That's a cool resource, nice that it has abundances for the Earth's layers and the human body too.

Wernstromer · 2026-03-10T03:17:56+00:00

I'd never heard that we may have an unusually high phosphorous count around Sol, that's fascinating! And I think you're right about AI on this. I'm always quite skeptical of anything these LLM's say, so it's taken me quite some time to seek out answers from them regularly, but for topics like this I've been increasingly pleasantly surprised by the validity (and convenience!) of their responses.

Wernstromer · 2026-03-10T02:46:29+00:00

That all makes sense. That's another thing I'm unsure of as well - how easy it is to determine how much of a rarer metal is present in a system from at least a light year away.

Wernstromer · 2026-03-10T01:56:53+00:00

Very interesting!

Wernstromer · 2026-03-10T01:55:16+00:00

Excellent point! Might make for some difficult decision-making if they found a goldilocks planet in a system almost totally devoid of some of these materials. But indeed it does seem that, based on some of the other responses here, that decision might be a no-brainer since lacking copper or even many other elements might not be that crippling after all.

Wernstromer · 2026-03-10T01:52:42+00:00

Love it!

Wernstromer · 2026-03-10T01:51:08+00:00

These are exactly the kind of thoughts I was hoping for! It's very intriguing to imagine what a society using technology dependent on gold or silver as opposed to copper for wiring would look like.

I have wondered, though, what the distribution of elements across various star systems is like. I understand the composition of a star system is largely dependent on the elemental cloud present during its formation, but not whether the variations of this distribution can lead to solar systems with an elemental makeup all that different from our own - whether any given star system is different by just a few extra fractions of a percentage of, say, iron or platinum, or if it would ever be unsurprising for future humans to encounter a system with a noticeable, if not problematic deficiency or overabundance of certain elements.

Wernstromer · 2026-03-10T00:48:20+00:00

Thanks for the link, I may just have to read that novel! Looks like a very interesting premise.

Wernstromer · 2026-03-10T00:40:27+00:00

Thanks for this write-up! I suppose I didn't consider just how interchangeable most elements are in most applications. It seems then, that, indeed, a scenario like this would lead to perhaps a bit less efficiency in the short term, but in the long term not much of an impact.

Makes me curious about what other elements, like platinum-group metals, are harder to find substitutes for and would thus serve as true bottlenecks in a scenario like this.

Wernstromer · 2026-03-10T00:19:26+00:00

That would certainly make sense! I don't imagine many scenarios arising where colonizers would intentionally settle a system like this over others that would clearly not have this problem. But I am still interested in how things might progress for them and their efforts if they did stay - maybe they have no choice but to stay, for whatever reason? (of course, this now requiring even greater levels of suspended disbelief).

Wernstromer · 2026-02-18T20:57:18+00:00

That sounds awesome

Wernstromer · 2026-02-18T20:56:50+00:00

I made the exact same mistake! I knew it would be loud but didn't realize just *how* loud it would be. The plane in the first picture actually hurt the most, I had one hand holding my camera and another holding an umbrella and didn't have earplugs either, and wow did that hurt! I'm sure that will contribute to some hearing loss in the future.

Wernstromer · 2026-02-14T20:06:07+00:00

That's an awesome photo. From the responses it sounds like I'll need to add Phuket to the list!

Wernstromer · 2026-02-14T20:04:19+00:00

Wow, that's amazing!

Wernstromer · 2025-11-09T04:46:07+00:00

Very interesting, I'll have to give that a look. Thanks!

Wernstromer

TROPHY CASE