"Tim Bruening" wrote in message
...


George Dishman wrote:

wrote in message
ps.com...
The first (number 2, but 1 is much later) part of Foundation specifies
that on the surface of Terminus, there is no trace of iron or aluminum.

What then does Terminus consist of?

If there is no trace of iron, how can any Earth-originated lifeform
exist there?

They cannot grow potatoes without iron in soil. Nor can any other
lifeform of Earth exist without iron - no plant, no alga, no bacterium.

Also, is it possible to have a planet with traces of iron, but small
traces only? Are there known stars where nucleosynthesis ended at
silicon and did not reach iron, so that the planets would consist of
pure rock and silicates, with no iron?

The metals come from supernovae and possibly many
of them contribute to the material in any planet.
Thus when the Solar System formed, it incorporated
the metals found in the region that were deposited
from previous SNe so you would be looking for a
region in which the materials could not form, not
just a single star.

Terminus' sun must be very old, so as to lack heavy elements.

It would need to be a small Pop II star, maybe half
the mass of Sun? How well was it described in terms
of colour and size?

George