P5 4 The Planet That Flew Too Close To The Sun

Abstract

In ’The Sunlit Man’ by Brandon Sanderson, the planet Canticle is subject to extreme solar radiation
causing the rock on the daylight side of the planet to melt over a short timescale of minutes to
hours. Whilst an explanation is given in the book involving the magic systems of investiture, we
attempt to describe a scenario where this superheating comes purely from the incident solar flux.
This model is then used to generate a plot to show the orbital radius of such a planet against the
time taken to melt the surface. Suitable orbital radii are found although they lie dangerously close
to the corona.