Despite assumptions you may have gathered from systems such as Tatooine, not all desert planets are warm. In fact, Feenicks I is an incredibly cold planet, with temperatures that make Hoth look warm. The deserts are filled with sand, only due to lack of rain or movement of any of the ice caps located in the north and south. While on some cold planets, the soil and sand are often frozen in place by permafrost, this is not the case here. In order for permafrost to happen, there must be moisture which the planet certainly lacks.

The planet is quite odd, however. Despite being such a cold planet, it has huge volcanic ranges, as well as a few extinct volcanoes. Despite the negative one hundred degree Celsius weather, the volcanic magma and lava still remain fresh and hot. This is a mystery few have been able to unravel. It appears as if the core of the planet itself is so hot that although the air itself is freezing, just below the surface it becomes extraordinary warm. Science teams which came about thirty years ago, dug approximately 3 meters deep only to find that the temperature there was almost 50 degrees above Celsius. Further investigation proved that even deeper, at about 30 meters deep, it was liquid magma.

This might explain the lack of liquid water, as any liquid which touches the ground quickly evaporates as soon as it penetrates the sand. Yet it does not explain the ice caps. Some scientists came up with the hypothesis that underneath the glaciers is a large layer of hard rock, which explains why it does not melt the ice caps.

As for the volcanoes, some of them have died out and melted down, leaving vast underground chambers located right in the middle of the volcanic terrain. It appears as if the volcanoes hadn’t actually died, rather the magma receded and the lava tubes were filled with freezing air. Some predictions say that in a few centuries the magma flows will grow, causing massive destruction across the surface.