A desert planet or dry planet is a theoretical type of terrestrial planet with very little water. The concept has become a common setting in science fiction, appearing as early as the 1956 film Forbidden Planet and Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune.

Habitability

A 2011 study suggested that not only are life-sustaining desert planets possible, but that they might be more common than Earth-like planets. The study found that, when modeled, desert planets had a much larger habitable zone than watery planets.

The same study also speculated that Venus may have once been a habitable desert planet as recently as 1 billion years ago. It is also predicted that Earth will become a desert planet within a billion years due to the Sun's increasing luminosity.

A study conducted in 2013 concluded that hot desert planets without runaway greenhouse effect can exist in 0.5 AU around Sun-like stars. In that study, it was concluded that a minimum humidity of 1% is needed to wash off carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but too much water can act as a greenhouse gas itself. Higher atmospheric pressures increase the range in which the water can remain liquid.

Desert Planet is a band from Lapland, northern Finland consisting of Jukka Tarkiainen, Jari Mikkola and Antti Hovila. They perform electronic music influenced by 8-bit video games, coin operated games and science fiction movies, generally characterised as bitpop or micromusic. They have released five albums and continue to perform live.

Career

Both Mikkola and Tarkianen were members of rock bands, before embarking on Desert Planet. It began as solo project by Jukka Tarkiainen (ex Jalla Jalla) who 'wanted to do something that rocks with computers'. Jari Mikkola (ex Greenhouse AC) joined the group in 2001 after directing a music video for the title song of the first album Asteroid Hopper. In 2003 Desert Planet released an album Joystick Pop through a label called ODOR, a sub-label of the Universal Music Group. A third album, Turbo Tellytunes was released in 2004. By the end of that year, the band signed a recording deal with a German label 9pm-records, to distribute their releases in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Stupido Records (Finland) did the same in Scandinavia. It was followed by the album Mario Built My Hot Rod, which featured Aleksi Eeben and Eläkeläiset. In December 2005 the band was given the "Artist of the year" award by the Arts Council of Lapland because of their innovative music, creative web appearance and do-it-yourself music exporting.