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I'm building a exoplanet with no humans included to do speculative biology, so I'm wondering what kind of effects would xenon have on the planet. I was thinking about a mixture of: N2-72% O2-22.9% Ar-1.05% CO2-0.8% and Xe-3.2% + some trace gases.

The question is what kind of effects would these amounts of xenon have on the planet? I have included some stats to help come up with an answer.

the stats if needed:

star

1.06 solar masses/ F type star

planet

Semi-Major axis 1.33 Au

Eccentricity 0.015 %

Mass 2.3 (earth masses)

Core Mass Fraction 34.6

Greenhouse effect 2.2 times of the earth

Average temperature 285K or +12 Celsius

Atmospheric Pressure 1.95 atm

radius 7957.379 km

surface gravity 1.474g

escape velocity 15.176 km/s

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    $\begingroup$ Radius? We can't work out surface gravity and escape velocity without it and that makes the math of gas stripping impossible. Also ask A question, not 3. $\endgroup$
    – Ash
    Commented Aug 8 at 1:08
  • $\begingroup$ Hello @OskarLaiho, welcome to Worldbuilding. For future reference, please understand that asking more than one question in a post is literally a reason to close a question. Though related, you've asked five separate questions, at least two of which violate Stack Exchange's Book Rule. Please carefully read the tour and the following three Help Center pages: help center, help center and help center. Thanks. $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Commented Aug 8 at 4:35
  • $\begingroup$ The important question here is, what does it make your voice sound like when you inhale it? $\endgroup$ Commented Aug 8 at 15:07
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    $\begingroup$ This is not worth an entire answer, but at 12°C and escape velocity 15.1 km/s, you're going to be accumulating helium in the atmosphere, and maybe some hydrogen. You're pretty close to getting a gas giant. Look up Jeans Escape. $\endgroup$
    – Monty Wild
    Commented Aug 9 at 0:52

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At a first glance, that looks fine to me.

Xenon is fairly inert. It's more reactive than the lighter noble gases, but it's still less reactive than just about anything else. It can form clathrates with other compounds under certain circumstances, but I don't think you'll get much of that happening at pressures of 1.95 atm.

You might get some xenon clathrates forming at the bottom of your planet's oceans, but if your planet has Earth-like plate tectonics, it'll eventually be subducted into volcanoes and returned to the atmosphere. So I don't think you'll need to worry about xenon being removed from the atmosphere permanently that way.

Xenon also has a quite high molecular mass; higher than most other gases. This means it'll be attracted to your planet more strongly than most other gases. Thus, if your planet can hold onto nitrogen and argon, it'll easily hold onto xenon as well.

You haven't given your planet's radius, surface gravity, or escape velocity, but if your planet's density is similar to Earth, those three things will all be higher than Earth. Which means your planet will be even better at holding onto gases over astronomical timescales than Earth is. So you don't need to worry about your planet's atmosphere being blown away by the solar wind. (And even if that did happen, the xenon would be the last thing to go.)

The concentration of xenon will decrease with altitude, though I can't say exactly how quickly (though it is definitely possible to calculate: the math of hydrostatic equilibrium will get you close, though, annoyingly, that Wikipedia page doesn't have an immediately-useful closed form solution to the differential equation it gives). The partial pressure of each component of the atmosphere will decrease exponentially with altitude (and would decrease in almost exactly the same way if it were the only gas in the atmosphere- the other components are pretty much irrelevant), but the xenon partial pressure will decrease more quickly due to its higher molecular mass.

Weather systems may be able to have a measurable impact on the xenon concentration by bringing masses of lower-xenon air from higher altitudes closer to the ground, though I would guess that this would only be measurable with sensitive equipment.

As an aside, if humans ever visit your planet, I expect they'll have more trouble with the CO2 than with the xenon. 0.8% CO2 is about twenty times the concentration in Earth's atmosphere, and your planet's total atmospheric pressure is twice as high, so the CO2 partial pressure is about forty times what is is on Earth. That might be enough to be a problem for human visitors.

Xenon does have a narcotic effect on humans and has been used in general anesthesia, but 0.064 atm of it is certainly not enough to knock a human out. That takes around 0.72 atm. I don't know at what partial pressure its other effects start to become noticeable.

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    $\begingroup$ The concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere is about 0.04%, about twenty times lower than the 0.8% in the question. (And in the question the total pressure is given as about 2 atm, so that the partial pressure of carbon dioxide is forty times higer than on Earth.) In our atmosphere carbon dioxide is a trace gas. $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Commented Aug 8 at 4:23
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    $\begingroup$ Ah, whoops. You're right. I misplaced the decimal point. Fixed now. Thanks! $\endgroup$ Commented Aug 9 at 0:28

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