In the sea of space and time, black holes are popular for their menacing ways: as objects that swallow everything in their path. However, new studies indicate that these gravitational giants may harbor a new class of objects—blanets or black hole planets.
Originally hypothesized as natural satellites formed from the disc of material orbiting a black hole, blanets cast doubt on current theories of planetary formation and spark the imagination regarding the ability of life to thrive within deadly surroundings.
Black hole dust clouds: A cradle for planetary birth
Blanets are believed to form from the accretion disks of dust and gaseous material around SMBHs. These regions, known as accretion disks, are the areas where dust particles coagulate through more or less the same process as the formation of planets around stars.
However, blanet formation occurs beyond the “snow line,” a place in the cold where ice can condense on dust grains. This icy layer makes the constituents adhere to each other in fists during the blow, consolidating into stones. Unlike Earth-like planets, however, blanets are monstrous. Some calculations propose that they could be 20,000 to 30,000 times the mass of Earth.
Computer models show that blanets can exist in the ‘black hole’s ‘magnetic field’ region where the gravity is strong enough to hold the blanets in orbit. This discovery suggests a much richer relationship between black holes and the material around them than thought.
The unique conditions enabling blanet formation
Black holes are not all cradles that can accommodate blanets. Firstly, the accretion disk’s temperature is central to forming such quasars. Blanets can only form around less luminous, cooler SMBHs where ice can be present beyond the snow line. In hotter environmental conditions, no ice holds the dust together. Hence, group formations are not readily achievable.
It takes millions of years to form blanets; the first is the rocky blanets. Some of these rocky proto-planets may eventually evolve into giant gaseous planets. Scientists have also worked on the models of blanet formation, and these worlds are compact rather than fluffy and low density as was proposed in the earlier models.
This complex view demonstrates that what may seem like a hostile environment in space can support exceptional procedures, raising other questions about where planets may develop and survive.
Is it possible for blanets to host life in extreme conditions?
It’s interesting and somewhat speculative even to consider the presence of life on blanets. These worlds revolve far away from their black hole central body, sometimes tens of light years apart. This isolation implies that they live under conditions quite distinct from those of planets in our solar system.
Blanets would feel the heat from ultraviolet and X-ray radiation from the corona of the black hole. Such radiation might seem fatal to life. However, Earth has proven to exist in numerous forms of life in conditions as unfriendly as it can get for life, such as hydrothermal vents and radioactive areas. Would similar mechanisms be possible for the existence of alien life on blanets?
If life were possible, it would be very different from what we can imagine. Radiation, isolation, and black hole energy characteristics may produce new forms of adaptation and survival in space-based environments.
Blanets are one of the most promising objects for studying the formation processes of planets and life’s existence in extreme conditions. These enormous, icy planets, which are still only hypothetical, are in orbit around supermassive black holes, making us rethink everything we know about the universe.
Regardless of whether life can exist on blanets, their discovery again shows how the universe never ceases to amaze. It brings to life the most bizarre possibilities out there in the great beyond at the doorstep of the most dreaded objects of space.