Fhrisson

Overview

Fhrisson, discovered in 4140 CE, is a planet in the Viana Cluster, orbiting the red dwarf star Vengals. It is a rather hot O-class world, tidally locked to its parent star and mostly shrouded in clouds. Fhrisson is home to the enigmatic Lifeform-6A159, a silicon-based life living in the oceans of Fhrisson. In the newer version of SCART, Fhrisson, having a high carbon content, has a classification of Oc, or a superoceanic supercarbonia.

Fhrisson is only 3.16 light years from Viana Prime, making these lifeforms extra easy to study.

Properties

Fhrisson is a super-earth - it is much more massive than Earth and is quite a bit larger. Even though it is a super-earth, it has a lower density, as it has a large hydrosphere in the form of a global ocean of various liquids. Fhrisson has no moons.

Hydrosphere

Its initial classification as an O-class world can be quite misleading, potentially leading one to believe that its seas were made of water, but as a result of such a carbon-rich world, Fhrisson has a relatively exotic hydrosphere, not very common throughout the Viana Cluster at least. It is made up of mostly complex hydrocarbons, with a bit of water mixed in at the deeper parts of the ocean, where pressures are great enough for water to exist in a liquid state without evaporating.

Composition of the hydrosphere of Fhrisson:

Substance	Chemical formula	Abundance
Pentadecanol	C₁₅H₃₂O	21.2%
Heptadecanol	C₁₇H₃₆O	19.7%
Cetyl Alcohol	C₁₆H₃₄O	17.2%
Pentadecane	C₁₅H₃₂	14.3%
Octadecane	C₁₈H₃₈	10.7%
Hexadecane	C₁₆H₃₄	8.91%
Heptadecane	C₁₇H₃₆	4.76%
Nonadecane	C₁₉H₄₀	2.73%
Water	H₂O	0.32%
Tetracosane	H(CH₂)₂₄H	0.13%
Other stuff		0.05%

As you can see, most of Fhrisson's hydrosphere is made up of carbon compounds. This allows for a certain kind of silicon life to thrive in this sort of environment. And another plus is that due to the underabundance of water, Ice VII is not able to form and plate tectonics can mostly go on as usual, albeit being slowed down by the large carbon content of the lithosphere.

Fhrisson's atmosphere is quite similar in its amount of carbon compounds, such as methane, ethane and propane, among others. It contains a large amount of Carbon Dioxide as well, as expected for a carbon-rich world.

Early observational history

Being discovered in 4140 CE by probes attached to solar sails, Fhrisson was not noted as being very interesting, just a hot O-class planet orbiting a carbon-rich red dwarf. Sadly, it, like so many other planets, just fell by the wayside, until 4165 CE, where a huge mission to find extraterrestrial life around the entire cluster was commissioned by the government on Viana Prime. Fhrisson was one of its first targets, due to its proximity and abundance of water.

When the life-hunting probe arrived at the planet, it did not spot any major biosignatures except for a small amount of excessive ammonia with no describable cause. The find motivated scientists to explore deeper into the mystery surrounding Fhrisson, and so, in 4190 CE, another mission was planned. This time it would be a small rover that would dive deep in Fhrisson's dark, slushy oceans to discover the true source of the excess ammonia. What it discovered would shock the entire population in Viana.

Life

From about 300 metres up, the rover could make out many strange cubes of all different sizes floating in the water, most of which were stuck to each other. They were translucent, small and had mostly no colour. This surprised the Ground Control at Viana Prime since they had never in their lives seen anything like this. Further observation of the 'cubes' revealed that these things were actually living - even less expected of something that looked like a preschool toy. The membrane was silicon-based, which meant that the life-itself was silicon-based too.

As it splash landed into Fhrisson's oceans, the rover saw its opportunity to analyse in detail the strange lifeforms, as a small, lone 'cube' was floating in its vicinity, which would be a perfect specimen to study the nature of the cubes. The rover propelled itself over and absorbed that 'cube' into its body. Then the rover swam back to the floating dock, climbed aboard, attached itself and blasted off Fhrisson's surface, destined for the small wormhole station in orbit of the planet.

Once it reached the station, the crew onboard recovered the rover and contained the specimen, along with its environment. They hauled the container into the wormhole gate, and it appeared on the other side of the wormhole, on Viana Prime.

At first, due to being exposed to the oxygen-rich air on Viana Prime (Much like on Earth) the 'cube' 's outer silicon-based membrane reacted with the oxygen and crystallised into quartz, killing the lifeform. So the scientists at Viana Prime decided to carry out the experiment again, but this time bring a large sample of Fhrisson's atmosphere so that the next specimen doesn't immediately die. The next day, the same rover dived back into Fhrisson's murky oceans and collected a second specimen, this time taking a sample of the atmosphere with it.

WIP