A fairly interesting site on the way to Beagle Point. An Icy world that should not exist. This icy world is a landable (no atmosphere) with 2x earth's gravity and has a radius of 19 thousand kilometers. It is also far warmer than ice can be (592k, in a vacuum), making this world fully impossible.

This world is on a tight orbit around a secondary star brown dwarf. However, the brown dwarf located only 40ls from the main star, and the Icy body is visible even from the main star.

It is located in Newton's Vault on the way to Beagle Point for anyone willing to take a mild detour to see this place. The whole region is worth it to explore.

A gallery of images is here

According to forum user Sapyx, the reason this world cannot exist reasonably is because " 'Hot ice' planets such as this one are an all-too-common occurrence in ED and have had threads devoted to them before. And no, such a world cannot exist in the real-world universe, even when we consider the likelihood that 'ice' doesn't just mean 'water ice'. A working planetological definition of 'ice' is 'any substance which would be a liquid or gas at standard Earth-normal temperature and pressure, but is solid at it's current temperature and pressure'. Thus, water can become 'ice'; so can ammonia, or nitrogen, or oxygen, or even hydrogen if it gets cold enough and/or the pressure gets high enough. But there is no substance in the universe that is gaseous at 1 atm and 288 K, but then becomes solid at higher temperatures and lower pressures. All substances become more volatile, not less, when you heat them and reduce the pressure - it's basic physics. Anything definable as 'ice' ought to evaporate into gas at 592 K in a vacuum. This planet should be a giant comet, flash-sublimating all that ice out into a giant atmosphere until the pressure gets high enough to attain equilibrium."

Worlds like this should have an atmosphere, as ice cannot exist under these conditions without an extremely thick atmosphere.

According to Forum user Sapyx "Planets that actually have their atmospheres switched 'on' are much more likely to obey the laws of physics. You can still get 'hot ice' planets, but the 'ice' is kept solid at such high temperatures under the pressure of thousands or millions of atms of pressure. For example, if we assumed that the OP's planet's 'ice' was indeed pure water ice, then the laws of physics state that a surface of solid ice at 592 K is still physically possible - if and only if the planet has a surface atmospheric pressure of over 100,000 atmospheres. Such planets can also be found in ED."

TL:DR Planets like this should have an atmosphere, ice's definition does not allow a planet like this to exist. If this planet had a thick atmosphere, a world like this actually could exist.

A fairly interesting site on the way to Beagle Point. An Icy world that should not exist. This icy world is a landable (no atmosphere) with 2x earth's gravity and has a radius of 19 thousand kilometers. It is also far warmer than ice can be (592k, in a vacuum), making this world fully impossible.

This world is on a tight orbit around a secondary star brown dwarf. However, the brown dwarf located only 40ls from the main star, and the Icy body is visible even from the main star.

It is located in Newton's Vault on the way to Beagle Point for anyone willing to take a mild detour to see this place. The whole region is worth it to explore.

According to forum user Sapyx, the reason this world cannot exist reasonably is because " 'Hot ice' planets such as this one are an all-too-common occurrence in ED and have had threads devoted to them before. And no, such a world cannot exist in the real-world universe, even when we consider the likelihood that 'ice' doesn't just mean 'water ice'. A working planetological definition of 'ice' is 'any substance which would be a liquid or gas at standard Earth-normal temperature and pressure, but is solid at it's current temperature and pressure'. Thus, water can become 'ice'; so can ammonia, or nitrogen, or oxygen, or even hydrogen if it gets cold enough and/or the pressure gets high enough. But there is no substance in the universe that is gaseous at 1 atm and 288 K, but then becomes solid at higher temperatures and lower pressures. All substances become more volatile, not less, when you heat them and reduce the pressure - it's basic physics. Anything definable as 'ice' ought to evaporate into gas at 592 K in a vacuum. This planet should be a giant comet, flash-sublimating all that ice out into a giant atmosphere until the pressure gets high enough to attain equilibrium."

Worlds like this should have an atmosphere, as ice cannot exist under these conditions without an extremely thick atmosphere.

According to Forum user Sapyx "Planets that actually have their atmospheres switched 'on' are much more likely to obey the laws of physics. You can still get 'hot ice' planets, but the 'ice' is kept solid at such high temperatures under the pressure of thousands or millions of atms of pressure. For example, if we assumed that the OP's planet's 'ice' was indeed pure water ice, then the laws of physics state that a surface of solid ice at 592 K is still physically possible - if and only if the planet has a surface atmospheric pressure of over 100,000 atmospheres. Such planets can also be found in ED."

TL:DR Planets like this should have an atmosphere, ice's definition does not allow a planet like this to exist. If this planet had a thick atmosphere, a world like this actually could exist.