Loading...

and that's referred to as runaway tidal heating. So there are cases where tidal heating is unavoidable, like if a companion planet is too big or too close, but for a big variety of combinations, the inner planet remains in its orbit just fine. And if an alien civilization develops on a planet like that, these aliens might discover general relativity all on their own. So there we have it. Some planets that they were thinking of at one point in time being uninhabitable because of how close they are to their star because of tidal heating, the activity is now showing that's maybe not the case.