Scientific Questions about hypothetical planet
Shinyhat
planet, Alna, as an extremely large planet, so large that it is the center
of the solar system, and all the other planets, including the sun, revolve
around it. Now I'm trying to see if there are any major logic problems
here. First of all, for such a large planet, it would obviously have way to
much gravity to support normal life, so I have it spinning much faster than
normal planets to counteract the gravity. That would work right? Basically,
I'm trying to set it up just right so that the environment on the planet
would be pretty much the same as here on earth.
Also, I'm looking for any wierd phenomenas that would happen given this
sort of situation.Like some sort of strange effect that would happen ever
once in a while, caused by the unusual solar setup. Any contributions would
be helpful, and please, don't steal this idea to put it in your own book.
That would be dishonorable and lame.
Thanks
--
§ Shinyhat §
Proud Proprietor of Left Handedness.
Holder of the Wooden Speak
LeifBrown
In article <01bdfac3$212547e0$fd26c8cc@n>, "Shinyhat" <shin...@rocketmail.com>
writes:
>around it. Now I'm trying to see if there are any major logic problems
>here. First of all, for such a large planet, it would obviously have way to
>much gravity to support normal life, so I have it spinning much faster than
>normal planets to counteract the gravity. That would work right?
Umm... No. It wouldn't. If you really want the sun to go around your
planet the planet must be *much* more massive than the sun. To construct an
analogy,
M(Earth):M(Sol) = M(Alna):M(Your star)
(roughly.)
> First of all, for such a large planet, it would obviously have way to
>much gravity to support normal life,
Forget supporting *life*. It won't even support *itself.*
You're talking about a body so massive that a star orbits *it.* Offhand, I
can name four kinds of bodies that might qualify:
1) Other stars.
2) White Dwarfs.
3) Neutron stars.
4) Black holes.
Not one of these is terribly hospitable.
And unfortunately, spinning your "planet" won't help. (Note that neutron
stars are known to spin *very* quickly. Like thousands of rotations per
second. Give them magnetic fields, and they become pulsars.)
Even if you spin it, you can't spin the poles. They collapse under their own
weight, and you wind up with a pancake or a doughnut instead of a planet.
Neither of those are terribly stable. The planet still falls into itself and
pulls the hole in afterwards.
I think you wind up with something super-dense no matter what you try.
So I suggest you examine *why* you want the star to orbit the planet. If
it's just something really cool, but otherwise unimportant, write it out.
Replace it with some other oddity.
If the story depends on the planet being the center of the universe, I might
try something exotic. Maybe a planet poised right between a star and one of
the objects listed above. A planet between a star and a black hole of equal
mass might work. As long as they weren't trading mass in the form of ionized
plasma.
Or, I might choose to scrap scientific realism altogether. It *is* just a
tool. Knowing that what you're doing is impossible is no reason not to do it.
Otherwise, what's the point in dreaming of publication?
Leif
atlas
> In my book, the solar system is set up very differently. I have the main
> planet, Alna, as an extremely large planet, so large that it is the center
> of the solar system, and all the other planets, including the sun, revolve
> around it. Now I'm trying to see if there are any major logic problems
> here. First of all, for such a large planet, it would obviously have way to
> much gravity to support normal life, so I have it spinning much faster than
> normal planets to counteract the gravity. That would work right? Basically,
> I'm trying to set it up just right so that the environment on the planet
> would be pretty much the same as here on earth.
> Also, I'm looking for any wierd phenomenas that would happen given this
> sort of situation.Like some sort of strange effect that would happen ever
> once in a while, caused by the unusual solar setup. Any contributions would
> be helpful, and please, don't steal this idea to put it in your own book.
> That would be dishonorable and lame.
> Thanks
Don't worryã nobody's going to steal this one without a physics degree
thrown in. Your basic problem is one of physics. There is a mass
threshold that any object must pass in order to begin nuclear fusion
processes and become a star. Below that threshold the object can be a
planet. In a system with a star and planets and lacking a black hole,
that star will be the most massive object in the system. In a simple
system like our own it will be impossible for a star to orbit a
conventional planet. You could begin to consider a complex binary system,
but be very careful. I've never said this on the usenet before, but you
might want to consult a physicist.
atlas
Dorothy J Heydt
Shinyhat <shin...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
>In my book, the solar system is set up very differently. I have the main
>planet, Alna, as an extremely large planet, so large that it is the center
>of the solar system, and all the other planets, including the sun, revolve
>around it.
I really don't see how you're going to bring this off. Mass,
size, and density are all interrelated. The larger a body, given
the same composition, the more massive it's going to be. The
more massive, the more its own gravity is going to pull it inward
towards its own center of mass, and the denser it'll be. The
denser a body is (and this is going to depend on how massive it
is), the closer it gets to the point where its mass is condensed
enough for solar fusion to start up. Before that happens, you
have what is apparently called a brown dwarf nowadays.
Afterwards, you have a star.
I've called in my resident physics expert, my husband.
[Hal here... You can have a body that is approximately of Earth
*size* and of solar mass. It's called a "white dwarf"--"black
dwarf" if you want it of planetary temperature. It'll be about
10,000 miles in diameter and can have any mass less than about 1.4
Solar masses--Chandrasekar's Limit--which is the real limit. You
will not, however, have anything like Earth-like gravity at the
surface.]
(So I asked him, "So if you have a body that size and mass,
what's the surface gravity going to be?" "Something godawful,"
he said, and calculated it on the back of a printout as 2.7 x
10^5 gravities, or in ordinary notation 270,000 gravities. You
will not get an Earthlike environment out of this.)
So if your planet is bigger than your sun, how are you going to
keep it from becoming a star?
I can think of two possible outs. One, make your planet
extremely low-mass for its size. Postulate some incident in the
early history of that solar system that brought two near-stellar-
mass objects together and tore 'em apart again, giving one a lot
of the low-mass material and the other the high-mass material.
Rather like what happened to the Earth/Moon system, only bigger.
(But in that case, if your planet is large but low-mass, it's not
going to be the center of rotation of the solar system.)
[Hal again... The low-mass object is also going to be almost
exclusively Hydrogen and Helium, by the way.]
Or you could make it a fantasy in which Newton's, Kepler's, and a
few other sets of laws don't hold.
I'm reminded of Lewis's _Voyage of the Dawn Treader,_ in which
the adventurers meet an old man who says he used to be a star in
Narnia's sky, till he got old and tired. "In our world," says
one of the Earth kids, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas."
"Even in your world," says the old star, "that is not what a star
is, but only what it is made of."
>Now I'm trying to see if there are any major logic problems
>here. First of all, for such a large planet, it would obviously have way too
>much gravity to support normal life, so I have it spinning much faster than
>normal planets to counteract the gravity. That would work right?
You would then have a markedly flattened world, wide at the
equator, flattened at the poles, and the perceived gravity at the
equator would be less than that at the poles. The classical work
on this theme, which you certainly should read if you haven't
already, is Hal Clement's _Mission of Gravity._ (But mind that
Clement got some of the details about sailing ships wrong.)
This, however, will only get you about a Jupiter-mass (but
smaller size) planet with a surface gravity of around 3 gravs
at the equator and about 600 at the poles. (Hal says that means
we have actually built rockets that could take off from Mesklin's
north pole.)
However, I don't think this would affect the fate of your
high-mass protoplanet, if it was more massive than the protosun,
to become a fast-spinning star rather than a fast-spinning
planet.
Hal also points out that if a body for any reason isn't doing
solar fusion (which keeps things generally radiating outward
even against gravitational attraction) and is more than 1.4
solar masses, it'll become a neutron star.
[Hal once more... And if it makes the transition from below 1.4
Solar masses to above that value, it'll do so abruptly, as a type
1A supernova...]
So even if your "sun" is going to be no bigger than a red dwarf
(in which case it isn't going to give off much light), if your
"planet" is sufficiently bigger than the "sun" to be the center
of mass of your solar system, it'll either be a star or a lump of
neutronium. And you'd probably better read the works of Robert
Forward, who's already done much thinking about creatures living
on the surface of a neutron star.
>I'm trying to set it up just right so that the environment on the planet
>would be pretty much the same as here on earth.
I really, truly don't think it can be done in this universe.
>Also, I'm looking for any wierd phenomenas that would happen given this
>sort of situation. Like some sort of strange effect that would happen
>every once in a while, caused by the unusual solar setup.
Gadzooks. What weird phenomena would you *not* get? You're
going to have to invent your own brand-new universe in which
either (a) an entirely different set of physical laws hold, or
(b) no physical laws hold at all, it's all magic and/or arbitrary
Divine intervention.
Mind you, you might conceivably get an interesting story out of
it. But you would have to construct your universe with
particular care.
And you better make it a fantasy from the get-go, because that's
what they're going to call it when it's done. You may as well
just decide to make it the most mind-boggling, concept-juggling
fantasy going.
(Hal remarks in passing, "I wonder if he's trying to put together
a Biblical-style universe in which the sun really does go around
the earth? Hmmmm... and Pratchett already did that, the sun
really goes around the earth in the Discworld series, but he
doesn't try to justify it with physics.")
>Any contributions would
>be helpful, and please, don't steal this idea to put it in your own book.
>That would be dishonorable and lame.
Oh, my dear sir.
(a) Yes, to steal valuable material from someone else would be
dishonourable and nobody here would do a thing like that.
(b) But ideas are not that valuable, because they are not rare.
Ideas creep out of the woodwork. Every one of has a file cabinet
full of ideas that we hope to get around to someday. The value
of yet another idea among a bunch of writers is, to paraphrase
Heinlein, equivalent to the value of yet another kitten on a
Missouri farm.
(c) You'll note I've already mentioned Clement, Forward, and
Pratchett as authors who have already written up and published
ideas very similar to the ones you describe--in the case of
Clement, probably before you were born. (And maybe I should
mention Velikovsky?)
(d) And finally, frankly, I can't see the point in stealing it.
No matter how interesting the idea may sound, you would have to
do a Technicolor hell of a lot of work on it before you could
get anything publishable on it, and we all have works of our own
we're busy working on.
So don't worry about it.
I know something else you probably ought to read, and that's
Philip Jose Farmer's "World of Tiers" series. Here you have a
set of worlds where Newtonian physics appears to hold locally,
but you can *climb* between them, I mean, really. The whole
universe is a construct put together for purposes unknown
and obscure by some Really Incomprehensible Weird Baddies. Or
bad weirdies. It might give you some ideas, not so much for
constructing your geocentric system, but for justifying it with
much hand-waving.
[Hal again... You should also read any decent textbook on
physics.]
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
_A Point of Honor_ is out....
Rachael M. Lininger
piggybacking...
>In article <01bdfac3$212547e0$fd26c8cc@n>, "Shinyhat"
><shin...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
>
>> In my book, the solar system is set up very differently. I have the main
>> planet, Alna, as an extremely large planet, so large that it is the center
>> of the solar system, and all the other planets, including the sun, revolve
>> around it. Now I'm trying to see if there are any major logic problems
>> here. First of all, for such a large planet, it would obviously have way to
>> much gravity to support normal life, so I have it spinning much faster than
>> normal planets to counteract the gravity. That would work right? Basically,
>> I'm trying to set it up just right so that the environment on the planet
>> would be pretty much the same as here on earth.
I suggest you look up _World-Building_ by Stephen L. Gillett, ISBN
0-89879-707-1. It explains the basics of solar systems and is far more
patient than I would be should I actually try to answer that question.
(It's impossible, period (unless you want to rewrite certain laws of
nature).)
The group for questions of this sort is rec.arts.sf.science, but I'm
not sure I'd recommend it.
>> Also, I'm looking for any wierd phenomenas that would happen given this
>> sort of situation.Like some sort of strange effect that would happen ever
>> once in a while, caused by the unusual solar setup. Any contributions would
>> be helpful, and please, don't steal this idea to put it in your own book.
>> That would be dishonorable and lame.
>> Thanks
How rude.
Excuse me, but ideas aren't copyrightable. If you post something on a
public group, expect that other people are going to read it, that
other people are going to think about it, and that other people may
well use it. If some clever person could actually get something like
that to work in a hard sf setting, more power to zir.
This group is supposed to give people ideas. Two different people can
do vastly different things with the same "idea." And it's perfectly
possible for those two people to have come up with that idea
separately (she said, weeping because Bear scooped her on isotopic
distribution).
Now, if you were to post actual _text_ from your story, asking for
critique, then that's a whole 'nother ball of plasma.
Rachael
--
lini...@virtu.sar.usf.edu | "These are the bone words,
| the cracks on the under-shell.
No, I'm not working on my thesis. | This is the other grammar."
Why do you ask? | --Le Guin
Shinyhat
LeifBrown <leif...@aol.com> wrote in article
<19981018152959...@ngol01.aol.com>...
>
> In article <01bdfac3$212547e0$fd26c8cc@n>, "Shinyhat"
<shin...@rocketmail.com>
> writes:
>
> >around it. Now I'm trying to see if there are any major logic problems
> >here. First of all, for such a large planet, it would obviously have way
to
> >much gravity to support normal life, so I have it spinning much faster
than
> >normal planets to counteract the gravity. That would work right?
>
> Umm... No. It wouldn't. If you really want the sun to go around your
> planet the planet must be *much* more massive than the sun. To construct
an
> analogy,
>
> M(Earth):M(Sol) = M(Alna):M(Your star)
>
> (roughly.)
>
> > First of all, for such a large planet, it would obviously have way to
> >much gravity to support normal life,
>
> Forget supporting *life*. It won't even support *itself.*
> You're talking about a body so massive that a star orbits *it.*
It doesnt "have" to be that large though. What if it was say, a little
bigger than Jupiter, and the star orbiting it is small, like just small
enough to be able to orbit the planet, but large enough and at the right
distance to provide light for the whole side of the planet.
Offhand, I
> can name four kinds of bodies that might qualify:
> 1) Other stars.
> 2) White Dwarfs.
> 3) Neutron stars.
> 4) Black holes.
Or really big planets with really small stars.
>
> Not one of these is terribly hospitable.
> And unfortunately, spinning your "planet" won't help. (Note that
neutron
> stars are known to spin *very* quickly. Like thousands of rotations per
> second. Give them magnetic fields, and they become pulsars.)
> Even if you spin it, you can't spin the poles. They collapse under
their own
> weight, and you wind up with a pancake or a doughnut instead of a planet.
> Neither of those are terribly stable. The planet still falls into itself
and
> pulls the hole in afterwards.
Now that's interesting. If that's the case, isnt gravity on the poles much
stronger than anywhere else in the world, even on our world? And how could
a planet "fall into itself"? Where does the matter go? And could a planet
actually exist in a shape other than a sphere?
> I think you wind up with something super-dense no matter what you try.
What exactly does super-dense mean? And what I'm talking about is a planet
about the size of Jupiter, with a sun appropriately sized.
> So I suggest you examine *why* you want the star to orbit the planet.
If
> it's just something really cool, but otherwise unimportant, write it out.
> Replace it with some other oddity.
> If the story depends on the planet being the center of the universe, I
might
> try something exotic. Maybe a planet poised right between a star and one
of
> the objects listed above. A planet between a star and a black hole of
equal
> mass might work. As long as they weren't trading mass in the form of
ionized
> plasma.
Woah woah...wait a second. Between a star and a black hole? Just sitting
there between them unmoving? In that scenario, wouldnt either the planet or
the star and black hole have to be orbiting? It couldnt just sit there
being stretched between the two things could it? And wouldnt the black hole
cause some really funky time/radio/magnetic/gravitational distortions?
> Or, I might choose to scrap scientific realism altogether. It *is*
just a
> tool. Knowing that what you're doing is impossible is no reason not to
do it.
> Otherwise, what's the point in dreaming of publication?
Bah. The story is fantasy, but it's fairly logical fantasy. They have some
limited technology based on gravity and kinetics, and they have advanced
astronomical studies, so it wouldnt fly to try to suggest they're too
stupid to realize that what's happening is impossible...
Shinyhat
atlas <at...@aloha.net> wrote in article
<atlas-18109...@kauai-47.u.aloha.net>...
> In article <01bdfac3$212547e0$fd26c8cc@n>, "Shinyhat"
> <shin...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
>
> > In my book, the solar system is set up very differently. I have the
main
> > planet, Alna, as an extremely large planet, so large that it is the
center
> > of the solar system, and all the other planets, including the sun,
revolve
> > around it. Now I'm trying to see if there are any major logic problems
> > here. First of all, for such a large planet, it would obviously have
way to
> > much gravity to support normal life, so I have it spinning much faster
than
> > normal planets to counteract the gravity. That would work right?
Basically,
> > I'm trying to set it up just right so that the environment on the
planet
> > would be pretty much the same as here on earth.
> > Also, I'm looking for any wierd phenomenas that would happen given this
> > sort of situation.Like some sort of strange effect that would happen
ever
> > once in a while, caused by the unusual solar setup. Any contributions
would
> > be helpful, and please, don't steal this idea to put it in your own
book.
> > That would be dishonorable and lame.
> > Thanks
>
> Don't worry‹ nobody's going to steal this one without a physics degree
> thrown in. Your basic problem is one of physics. There is a mass
> threshold that any object must pass in order to begin nuclear fusion
> processes and become a star. Below that threshold the object can be a
> planet. In a system with a star and planets and lacking a black hole,
> that star will be the most massive object in the system. In a simple
> system like our own it will be impossible for a star to orbit a
> conventional planet. You could begin to consider a complex binary
system,
> but be very careful. I've never said this on the usenet before, but you
> might want to consult a physicist.
Hm...so you mean that any heavenly body that is a certain size will
*become* a star, even if it was supposed to be a planet, and no object
below a certain size would be capable of being a star? Hm...that is a
problem isnt it.
Leif suggested I could have the planet be stuck between a star and a black
hole...what do you think about that? What about the black hole's time
distortion and stuff? Wouldnt it screw up magnetics, gravity, etc?
SAMK
Shinyhat <shin...@rocketmail.com> wrote in article
<01bdfaf7$e1a20600$e126c8cc@n>...
>
> Hmm....egad, I think I see your point. Ok, so here's two propositions I'd
> like to put to you or your husband. One was suggested by Leif Brown, and
I
> don't fully understand it, but its this:
>
> Suppose the planet was sortof "stuck" in the center of the universe
between
> a star and a black hole. Now wait...that wouldnt be possible, because the
> star and black hole would be drawn by each other and collide, right? I'm
> not sure exactly what Leif was proposing, but I'd just pose that idea to
> you.
I imagine, because Leif suggested two bodies of equal mass, that the star
and the black hole are orbiting each other, and the planet is stuck at a
point equal distance between the two. They should not collide, but I'd
think I'd want to study up on binary systems a bit more before I could
speak for what other phenomena this planet was subjected to.
Is there ANY way that a planet could be remotely similar to Earth and
> still exist in the center of a solar system?
No. Not with physics as we currently know it.
Aren't there varying theories
> about how the sun produces its power? So would it possibly be possible
for
> a star to be smaller than Jupiter and still be a star?
> How about this...it's a small stretch of physics but...suppose we had a
> huge Jupiter sized planet. And suppose we had a small star, but it was
> powered by something other than nuclear fusion, say...some sort of magic
> source. I'm thinking how I could work this into my story as I'm writing
> this but...*that* would work right? <pant pant>
You seem to be unclear in your concept of "size". Are you speaking in
the matter of diameter only? The problem is, mass is the driving factor
in gravity and its relationships. Diameter just says how dense the mass
is, and drives the type of body you get.
Now, if you are going to throw in a magik source, you can make your
solar system do any durned thing you like. Just do not try to call
modern, this-universe physics to justify it.
SAMK, once astronomy major
sa...@inil.com
Shinyhat
<heavy snippage>
>Now I'm trying to see if there are any major logic problems
> >here. First of all, for such a large planet, it would obviously have way
too
> >much gravity to support normal life, so I have it spinning much faster
than
> >normal planets to counteract the gravity. That would work right?
>
> You would then have a markedly flattened world, wide at the
> equator, flattened at the poles, and the perceived gravity at the
> equator would be less than that at the poles.
> >I'm trying to set it up just right so that the environment on the planet
> >would be pretty much the same as here on earth.
>
> I really, truly don't think it can be done in this universe.
Hmm....egad, I think I see your point. Ok, so here's two propositions I'd
like to put to you or your husband. One was suggested by Leif Brown, and I
don't fully understand it, but its this:
Suppose the planet was sortof "stuck" in the center of the universe between
a star and a black hole. Now wait...that wouldnt be possible, because the
star and black hole would be drawn by each other and collide, right? I'm
not sure exactly what Leif was proposing, but I'd just pose that idea to
you. Is there ANY way that a planet could be remotely similar to Earth and
still exist in the center of a solar system? Aren't there varying theories
about how the sun produces its power? So would it possibly be possible for
a star to be smaller than Jupiter and still be a star?
How about this...it's a small stretch of physics but...suppose we had a
huge Jupiter sized planet. And suppose we had a small star, but it was
powered by something other than nuclear fusion, say...some sort of magic
source. I'm thinking how I could work this into my story as I'm writing
this but...*that* would work right? <pant pant>
> >Also, I'm looking for any wierd phenomenas that would happen given this
> >sort of situation. Like some sort of strange effect that would happen
> >every once in a while, caused by the unusual solar setup.
>
> Gadzooks. What weird phenomena would you *not* get?
Hm. I see.
> Mind you, you might conceivably get an interesting story out of
> it. But you would have to construct your universe with
> particular care.
I'm afraid that's way beyond my plans for the world. I'll have to find
another way.
> And you better make it a fantasy from the get-go, because that's
> what they're going to call it when it's done. You may as well
> just decide to make it the most mind-boggling, concept-juggling
> fantasy going.
>
Well it is fantasy, but its a rational, scientific yet medieval fantasy
world.
> (Hal remarks in passing, "I wonder if he's trying to put together
> a Biblical-style universe in which the sun really does go around
> the earth? Hmmmm... and Pratchett already did that, the sun
> really goes around the earth in the Discworld series, but he
> doesn't try to justify it with physics.")
Well yes...that IS what I'm trying to do, have the sun really go around the
earth, but as we've discovered in this discussion, it seems to be
impossible by conventional means. Biblical style universe? You're reffering
to the scripture where God makes the sun stand still so the Israelites can
win the battle?
As for Pratchett, Discworld isn't a serious work, and mine is, so that
wouldn't be a conflict. The conflict is that I AM trying to justify it by
physics...
>
> >Any contributions would
> >be helpful, and please, don't steal this idea to put it in your own
book.
> >That would be dishonorable and lame.
>
> Oh, my dear sir.
>
> (a) Yes, to steal valuable material from someone else would be
> dishonourable and nobody here would do a thing like that.
>
> (b) But ideas are not that valuable, because they are not rare.
> Ideas creep out of the woodwork. Every one of has a file cabinet
> full of ideas that we hope to get around to someday. The value
> of yet another idea among a bunch of writers is, to paraphrase
> Heinlein, equivalent to the value of yet another kitten on a
> Missouri farm.
Well yeah, but some poor smuck might be sitting there thinking "Man, I need
an idea for a new and different kind of solar system" and see this and
light up with joy as he steals the idea. Heheh. Little does he know...it
doesnt work. <evil laughter>
>
> (c) You'll note I've already mentioned Clement, Forward, and
> Pratchett as authors who have already written up and published
> ideas very similar to the ones you describe--in the case of
> Clement, probably before you were born. (And maybe I should
> mention Velikovsky?)
Are those books of Clement and Forward fictional works, or physics type
books? Are they sci-fi or fantasy?
> (d) And finally, frankly, I can't see the point in stealing it.
> No matter how interesting the idea may sound, you would have to
> do a Technicolor hell of a lot of work on it before you could
> get anything publishable on it, and we all have works of our own
> we're busy working on.
>
> So don't worry about it.
Right right, of course not.
> I know something else you probably ought to read, and that's
> Philip Jose Farmer's "World of Tiers" series. Here you have a
> set of worlds where Newtonian physics appears to hold locally,
> but you can *climb* between them, I mean, really. The whole
> universe is a construct put together for purposes unknown
> and obscure by some Really Incomprehensible Weird Baddies. Or
> bad weirdies. It might give you some ideas, not so much for
> constructing your geocentric system, but for justifying it with
> much hand-waving.
Well, using magical/divine intervention to justify it would be my totally
last resort. If I can in any form or fashion, I want it scientifically
possible.
> [Hal again... You should also read any decent textbook on
> physics.]
I think I'll do that. By the way, if Hal happens to have the ICQ chat
system, I'd be thrilled to chat with him about this thing. It's so much
easier to communicate in real time.
Dorothy J Heydt
Shinyhat <shin...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
>
>It doesnt "have" to be that large though. What if it was say, a little
>bigger than Jupiter, and the star orbiting it is small, like just small
>enough to be able to orbit the planet, but large enough and at the right
>distance to provide light for the whole side of the planet.
If the star is massive enough to shine... if the planet is
not-massive enough not to shine... then the planet is going to be
orbiting the star and not vice versa.
>Bah. The story is fantasy, but it's fairly logical fantasy. They have some
>limited technology based on gravity and kinetics, and they have advanced
>astronomical studies, so it wouldnt fly to try to suggest they're too
>stupid to realize that what's happening is impossible...
OK. If it's fantasy, then all you have to do is make it
internally consistent. Go for it.
shin...@rocketmail.com
"Rachael M. Lininger" <lini...@virtu.sar.usf.edu> wrote:
>
> piggybacking...
>
> >In article <01bdfac3$212547e0$fd26c8cc@n>, "Shinyhat"
> ><shin...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> In my book, the solar system is set up very differently. I have the main
> >> planet, Alna, as an extremely large planet, so large that it is the center
> >> of the solar system, and all the other planets, including the sun, revolve
> >> here. First of all, for such a large planet, it would obviously have way to
> >> I'm trying to set it up just right so that the environment on the planet
> >> would be pretty much the same as here on earth.
>
> 0-89879-707-1. It explains the basics of solar systems and is far more
> patient than I would be should I actually try to answer that question.
> (It's impossible, period (unless you want to rewrite certain laws of
> nature).)
>
> The group for questions of this sort is rec.arts.sf.science, but I'm
> not sure I'd recommend it.
>
> >> once in a while, caused by the unusual solar setup. Any contributions would
> >> be helpful, and please, don't steal this idea to put it in your own book.
> >> That would be dishonorable and lame.
>
> How rude.
>
> Excuse me, but ideas aren't copyrightable. If you post something on a
> public group, expect that other people are going to read it, that
> other people are going to think about it, and that other people may
> well use it. If some clever person could actually get something like
> that to work in a hard sf setting, more power to zir.
Ok, first of all, I wrote that under the assumption that my idea would indeed
work. And obviously, if I had an interesting concept that I haven't seen
before, I would rather someone didn't take it and put it in their own book,
thereby lessening the impact of mine should it ever get published. I mean, if
you posted the general idea of the plot of your book, and then found a book
released soon after that had the exact same concepts and plotline that you
were going to do, wouldn't you be a bit upset if you knew that someone stole
it from you off the newsgroup?
Isaac
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Dorothy J Heydt
Shinyhat <shin...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
>
>Suppose the planet was sort of "stuck" in the center of the universe between
>a star and a black hole. Now wait...that wouldn't be possible, because the
>star and black hole would be drawn by each other and collide, right?
Not if the star was in orbit around the black hole, or vice
versa, or they were in orbit around a mutual center of gravity.
(Which you would get would depend on how much each of them
massed.)
[Hal interlineating... Actually, they'll orbit about their
mutual center of gravity no matte *what* the relative masses are.
That's how orbits work. Even an artificial satellite and the
Earth orbit about their mutual center of gravity--which is
*real*close* to the center of mass of the Earth...]
However, a planet in the middle of these two would not be a place
where you could support Earth-style life... and it probably
wouldn't survive very long even as a planet. Black hole/star
binaries are short-lived phenomena.
[Hal again... Ignoring minor questions like radiation emission
from the environs of a black hole.... The planet won't *stay*
there in any case, and in the case of two stars, the masses
aren't likely to be different enough to permit Lagrange's
solutions to the three body problem.]
Now, if you've got a primary body with a secondary body orbiting
it, there are five Lagrange points, which are positions relative
to the two bodies where you could, in theory, put a third. You've
probably heard of L4 and L5, the "leading" and "trailing Trojan"
positions, named after the asteroids in those positions in Jupiter's
orbit (which are mostly named after the heroes of the Trojan
War). Bodies in that position have "positive stability", that
is, given half a chance they'll drift into that position and if
they wander a little, they'll tend to drift back in. They're orbiting
the primary, in the same orbit as the secondary, but 60 degrees
ahead or behind.
The first three Lagrange pointsm L1, L2, and L3, are (not necessarily
in that order) between the primary and the secondary; in the same
orbit as the secondary, but on the opposite side of the primary;
and on the far side of the secondary as seen [or rather, not
seen] from the primary. These positions have "neutral
stability". A body will not drift into such a position and take
up residence there. Put one there, it will drift away of itself,
given any perturbation (like, any planet going by in its orbit, or
even the solar wind blowing on it).
And anyway, the ratio of the mass of primary to secondary must be
at least 25.4 to one. And the mass of the tertiary bodies has to
be *insignificant* compared to that of the secondary.
So you're not going to get a functioning star/black hole/
Earthlike planet system, nohow.
>... Is there ANY way that a planet could be remotely similar to Earth and
>still exist in the center of a solar system?
No. It's a question of mass. Central position requires large mass;
large mass tends to become star. You can't have a planet that
masses more than your star; it will become a star itself and a
bigger star at that.
>Aren't there varying theories
>about how the sun produces its power?
Not that varying! It's hydrogen fusion, no matter how you do it.
[Hal commenting... You can argue about things like the "Solar
Phoenix cycle" or direct fusion, but those aren't differences
that will do you any good in this context.]
>So would it possibly be possible for
>a star to be smaller than Jupiter and still be a star?
No. Bodies considerably larger than Jupiter are no more than
vaguely warm "brown dwarfs."
>How about this...it's a small stretch of physics but...suppose we had a
>huge Jupiter sized planet. And suppose we had a small star, but it was
>powered by something other than nuclear fusion, say...some sort of magic
>source.....
Now, if you're doing fantasy instead of SF, as I believe you said
on another post, now that you can do. Or, as Hal and I were
chatting about as we drove up to the vet to get the cat out of
hock, you could have a very technologically advanced species who
had terraformed a rogue planet and given it a small "sun" of its
own, powered by some unknown principle and in an orbit of
suitable distance from the planet. First catch your unknown
principle! But if it's simply "magic", then your problem is
less. (NB if you want to try to make it SF, you could still have
your present inhabitants of lower tech level: they have forgotten
the mighty skills of their ancestors, that happens every week.)
Keep in mind that the surface gravity of Jupiter is slightly over
two (modulo the fact that Jupiter doesn't really have a surface)...
and if you had a terrestrial planet of one Jovian mass it would
have, Hal guesses, a surface gravity of something over 10, but
he doesn't want to be held to that.
[Hal again... And if your artificial sun uses hydrogen fusion,
you've got to supply enough hydrogen to keep it going for quite a
while...and if "quite a while" is long enough to develop life,
it'll have to have stellar mass....]
>Well it is fantasy, but its a rational, scientific yet medieval fantasy
>world.
Ummmm, what is that supposed to mean?
[Hal asks... Are you trying to construct a world in which the
world works as we know it, but the society, politics, economics,
etc., etc. are similar to the European Middle Ages --ca.
1000-1300 AD--or something? If that's what you're trying for,
what do you need to muck with the physics for? If you want to
keep them from figuring out that the "Earth" doesn't orbit the
"Sun," try removing the "Moon"--unless you wish to postulate that
the events that created the Earth-Moon system are necessary
prevent developing an atmosphere as dense as that of Venus.]
{Dorothy replies to Hal: No problem. In the real Middle Ages in
*this* universe they didn't know that the earth doesn't orbit the
sun. All you need is a few factors like people being too busy
fighting barbarians and growing food to have time to make the
necessary long years of meticulous observations.}
>...The conflict is that I AM trying to justify it by
>physics...
Again, I'm not sure I understand. You want to write a fantasy
world but you want the physics to be justifiable. You are going
to be straddling two rather far-apart chairs in that case,
including both fantasy and really-high-tech-physics science.
Perhaps it's time I asked: *why* do you need to have the sun
going around the earth, and why do you need scientific
justification for your fantasy?
Maybe if you can make this more explicit, we can come up with
some likelier ideas.
>>[ideas are like kittens]
>Well yeah, but some poor smuck might be sitting there thinking "Man, I need
>an idea for a new and different kind of solar system" and see this and
>light up with joy as he steals the idea. Heheh. Little does he know...it
>doesnt work. <evil laughter>
Well, *we* all know it doesn't work.
Such clueless types as actually would attempt to steal an "idea"
are generally incapable of doing the work to make a finished
manuscript out of it.
But if you give six competent writers the same "idea," they'll
come up with six different stories. (Can anybody supply offhand
the details of the Twayne Triplet attempt, they gave three writers
the same setup [vanished colony on a planet in a Trojan system]
and Isaac Asimov wrote "Sucker Bait" and Poul Anderson wrote I
forget what and the third writer didn't come through? Two surviving
*really different* stories from the same premise.)
>Are those books of Clement and Forward fictional works, or physics type
>books? Are they sci-fi or fantasy?
They are *hard* science fiction, absolutely oozing physics from
every pore. (Except where Clement made a few mistakes on the
physics of sailing ships.)
>> I know something else you probably ought to read, and that's
>> Philip Jose Farmer's "World of Tiers" series.
This, on the other hand, I would call rather soft science
fiction. But not quite fantasy, though it sorta wanders through
the fuzzy borderlands at times.
>Well, using magical/divine intervention to justify it would be my totally
>last resort. If I can in any form or fashion, I want it scientifically
>possible.
Again ... I'm just curious ... why are you so anxious to have a
system that the physics of this universe just doesn't support,
and still somehow find a justification for it?
>> [Hal again... You should also read any decent textbook on
>> physics.]
>
>I think I'll do that. By the way, if Hal happens to have the ICQ chat
>system, I'd be thrilled to chat with him about this thing. It's so much
>easier to communicate in real time.
Unfortunately, neither of us do. But I read this group one to
several times a day.
Dorothy J Heydt
>Ok, first of all, I wrote that under the assumption that my idea would indeed
>work. And obviously, if I had an interesting concept that I haven't seen
>before,
It's extremely unlikely that you will come up with an idea no one
has had before. It's extremely unlikely that *any* of us *ever*
will.
I would rather someone didn't take it and put it in their own book,
>thereby lessening the impact of mine should it ever get published.
If both of you wrote, each his own book, on the same general
theme, the reaction would be "Isn't this interesting! Look how
they've got the same theme but the two writers have given it such
thoroughly different treatments." So far from lessening each
other's impact, you'd probably increase each other's sales just
slightly as everyone who'd bought one of the books rushed out to
buy the other. (This is assuming both of you are competent
writers.) It's not what you start with, it's what you do with it
that counts.
I mean, if
>you posted the general idea of the plot of your book, and then found a book
>released soon after that had the exact same concepts and plotline that you
>were going to do, wouldn't you be a bit upset if you knew that someone stole
>it from you off the newsgroup?
I think I would say, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."
After all, since the other person's book would have nothing in
common with mine except a common outline--no, scratch that, 'cause
I don't *write* outlines, only vague descriptions that turn into
text under the principle of _solvitur ambulando_--a common
general description suitable for posting in a newsgroup, they
would be very very different books and I would be interested in
how the other person handled it.
pa...@webnexus.com
people on the planet to justify saying the star revolves
around the planet. Well, you don't actually need to do
very much, just make that one planet be the only planet
in the system. Then there would not be any niggling
points of light in the sky which reverse directions
during the year. A model that had the star orbiting
the planet would be as simple and just as accurate as
a model that had the planet orbiting the star.
That's one of the things that did the old aristotlean
solar system mechanics, to account for the motions of
the other planets the model became so baroque that it
collapsed under its own weight.
This ignores problems of solar system formation, but
that's easily fixable, merely have advanced aliens
(or the inhabitants in an earlier technical era) go
clean out the other planets & other orbital garbage.
Sam Paik
Jake Hartline
Heydt) wrote:
<rest of discussion snipped>
>It's extremely unlikely that you will come up with an idea no one
>has had before. It's extremely unlikely that *any* of us *ever*
>will.
Greetings Dorothy and all..
This raises an interesting point. I agree that pretty much
everything -possible- has been done in writing. However, I think that
the reason for this is simply that we mere mortals do not possess the
faculty to express the entire breadth of our imaginations. I
frequently nourish ideas that I would find very difficult indeed to
express in words - and there's so much shading and depth to even the
simplest human thought.
One might also consider linguistic competence - the ability, in
part, to form an unlimited number of utterances in a given language.
I'd be willing to be no has heard or read the following sentence
anywhere:
There are six elephants in this reading room whose ivory I desire for
teacups.
Thus it could be argued that although semantic expression is without
limit, and ideas are without limit, expressing ideas that have never
been seen outside of personal consciousness is limited because
humanity is incapable of expressing -all- such ideas.
As for the question of -why- humanity is incapable - well, that's
not a book I'll write, and it's a discussion beyond the scope of this
newsgroup.
Jake
mor...@uvic.ca
Martin Jamieson
>
> It occurs to me that all you really need is a way for the
> people on the planet to justify saying the star revolves
> around the planet. Well, you don't actually need to do
> very much, just make that one planet be the only planet
> in the system. Then there would not be any niggling
> points of light in the sky which reverse directions
> during the year. A model that had the star orbiting
> the planet would be as simple and just as accurate as
> a model that had the planet orbiting the star.
sun orbiting the planet will essentially look the same (relative motion)
as the planet orbiting the sun. There is no physical way that planet
could orbit a star.
I think the important point here is what level of technology do the
people that inhabit the system possess. If they are advanced then you
have to get things physically right and not rely on appearences. If you
decide to take on a fantasy setting where studies of the stars are
carried out with the naked eye, then appearences will suffice.
In our own history, it wasn't until the publication of Copernicus' 'De
Revolutionibus' c.1515 a.d. that it was generally accepted that the
Earth revolved around the sun, and that's even with the couple of
planets that everyone could see. The belief system was very hard to
shake (most people couldn't get over the idea that if the Earth was in
motion, why don't we fall off - Newton wasn't born until 1643 a.d). The
church also had a lot to do with keeping the geocentric model as
changing would admit that we weren't at the centre of the universe and
this went against a lot of their preachings (in fact the church didn't
change models until about 1610 a.d when Galileo caused a bit of a stir
publishing 'the Dialogue (of the two chief world systems)')
> That's one of the things that did the old aristotlean
> solar system mechanics, to account for the motions of
> the other planets the model became so baroque that it
> collapsed under its own weight.
Actually, to be fair, Aristotle (384-322 b.c) was probably the first to
think about a heliocentric model (revolve around the sun), he realised
that there wouldn't be any perceivable difference in appearences but he
went with the geocentric model (couldn't get past that Earth in motion
bit, and he couldn't detect any parralax in the stars). Hipparchus
(160-127 b.c) and Ptolmey (c.140 a.d) added eccentricity to aristotle's
model and the later designed an exotic system of cycles, epicycles,
eccentrics and equants that quite accurately predicted lunar and
planetary positions. So the model didn't collapse at all because of any
lack of predictability - this version stood for over 1400 years!
Once again I get back to the level of technology in the setting of this
story.
> This ignores problems of solar system formation, but
> that's easily fixable, merely have advanced aliens
> (or the inhabitants in an earlier technical era) go
> clean out the other planets & other orbital garbage.
or, the rest of the initial material could have gathered in areas that
are not suitable for planet formation - there could be an asteroid belt
that wouldn't be visible to the naked eye. There's even enough room to
have one or two gas giants a fair way out. Not every planet forming
soalr system will have the same amount of planet forming material that
we have. The first sighting of uranus was made by galileo, but he didn't
even realise it at the time and it was only a bit more than a hundred or
so years ago that it was discovered for real.
So there isn't any fixing needed at all for solar system formation
principles as long as the population doesn't have any powerful
telescopes.
--
Martin Jamieson
"The subtle art of negotiation is being able to say 'nice doggy', over
and over, until you can find a big enough stick."
Rachael M. Lininger
On Mon, 19 Oct 1998 shin...@rocketmail.com wrote:
>In article <Pine.GSO.4.02.981018...@virtu.sar.usf.edu>,
> "Rachael M. Lininger" <lini...@virtu.sar.usf.edu> wrote:
[trimmed]
>> >In article <01bdfac3$212547e0$fd26c8cc@n>, "Shinyhat"
>> ><shin...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >> Also, I'm looking for any wierd phenomenas that would happen given this
>> >> sort of situation.Like some sort of strange effect that would happen ever
>> >> once in a while, caused by the unusual solar setup. Any contributions would
>> >> be helpful, and please, don't steal this idea to put it in your own book.
>> >> That would be dishonorable and lame.
>> >> Thanks
>>
>> How rude.
>>
>> Excuse me, but ideas aren't copyrightable. If you post something on a
>> public group, expect that other people are going to read it, that
>> other people are going to think about it, and that other people may
>> well use it. If some clever person could actually get something like
>> that to work in a hard sf setting, more power to zir.
>
>Ok, first of all, I wrote that under the assumption that my idea would indeed
>work. And obviously, if I had an interesting concept that I haven't seen
>before, I would rather someone didn't take it and put it in their own book,
>thereby lessening the impact of mine should it ever get published. I mean, if
If you really think you have an idea no one has seen before and don't
want anyone else to get ideas from it, then don't post it. And for
god's sake don't post it asking for help with it--how can it be "your"
idea anymore, since you've had other people work on it? If there were
such a think as ownership of ideas, I think it would include working
them out yourself. But you're unlikely to have a really new idea.
>you posted the general idea of the plot of your book, and then found a book
>released soon after that had the exact same concepts and plotline that you
>were going to do, wouldn't you be a bit upset if you knew that someone stole
>it from you off the newsgroup?
I wouldn't post an outline or anything like; that's simple common
sense. If I did, and saw a short story on that idea--I don't work on
novel-sized notions at the moment--I'd probably go, "Neat! Look what
zie did with it!" But I wouldn't accuse the author of theft, and I
certainly wouldn't assume zie stole the idea from me. Even if the
author posted here regularly: there _is_ an idea pool here, and I
would be surprised if two people didn't at one point dip out the same
kind of fish.
two...@mc64.merton.ox.ac.uk
: In my book, the solar system is set up very differently. I have the main
: planet, Alna, as an extremely large planet, so large that it is the center
: of the solar system, and all the other planets, including the sun, revolve
: around it.
This seems slightly implausible, as lots of people have posted.
Do you have to have the main planet being enormously large?
If not, why not have a central planet of perhaps twice Earth's mass -
I suspect there's some nasty solid-state physics going on in the cores
and radius does not scale as cube root of mass, so you can't get a
rocky planet much bigger than Earth - and have a series of fairly
low-mass asteroids put into orbit around it, one of which has an Acme
ZPE Generator on it to produce enough light to dimly illuminate the
central planet.
Say 1W per square meter on the planet's surface, and r=10000km - the
generator would be of the order of 10^14 watts, which is only five
orders of magnitude larger than the biggest powerstation ever built.
Your natives are going to be squat creatures with enormous eyes,
unless they 'see' by some other technique altogether, since you can't
justify getting ridiculous energies from the Acme Generator.
Tom
Dragan Milosevic
>pa...@webnexus.com wrote:
>Huh? I think what you are trying to say is that the *appearance* of the
>sun orbiting the planet will essentially look the same (relative motion)
>as the planet orbiting the sun. There is no physical way that planet
>could orbit a star.
Actually, the appearance of the sun orbiting the planet is caused by the
fact that the planet revolves.
The fact that planet orbits the sun can be noticed only by the fact that the
sun moves WRT the stars.
>I think the important point here is what level of technology do the
>people that inhabit the system possess. If they are advanced then you
>have to get things physically right and not rely on appearances. If you
>decide to take on a fantasy setting where studies of the stars are
>carried out with the naked eye, then appearances will suffice.
They could get reasonably developed before they noticed that something is
wrong.
1. Astronomical telescopes could help if they notice some binary stars.
Until then, the only use of a telescope is to discover new stars.
2. There is no reasonable way to deduce Kepler's law, and thus no reason to
discover gravity law. When they discover that objects weigh less on the
mountain they can make a dozen of "explanations" for that. Basically, F=mg
and that is that. It's even possible to get to the special theory of
relativity without a concept of gravity. And then, when they try to find a
solution for noninertial systems (by then they invented the elevator), there
are going to be some nasty surprises...
Mick
<lini...@virtu.sar.usf.edu> wrote:
<big snip>
>
>How rude.
>
Ha! That's a laughable comment coming from you, Racheal. But then
again you've never been known for your patience with others....
<bigger snip>
Yank.
<back again>
kens...@hotmail.com
[big planet, star orbits it]
> > > First of all, for such a large planet, it would obviously have way to
> > >much gravity to support normal life,
> >
> > Forget supporting *life*. It won't even support *itself.*
> > You're talking about a body so massive that a star orbits *it.*
>
> It doesnt "have" to be that large though. What if it was say, a little
> bigger than Jupiter, and the star orbiting it is small, like just small
> enough to be able to orbit the planet, but large enough and at the right
> distance to provide light for the whole side of the planet.
There *do* seem to be some basic scientific problems with this concept.
Depending on how scientific you want this story to be, this may or may not be
a problem.
A planet a little bigger than Jupiter is intensely unlikely to be anything
other than a gas giant. That probably doesn't suit your needs. It could
otherwise possibly be a brown dwarf or a neutron star, neither of which would
suit your needs, I'm sure. Or it could be some kind of bizarre, probably
artificial hollow planet, in which case it would be much less massive than
Jupiter even though it had a larger diameter. That's pretty implausible--and
not helpful to your premise.
Basically, if the planet is small enough to be stable and solid, and if the
star is big enough to undergo fusion (and hence, for example, produce light),
then there's really not going to be any 'normal' situation in which the star
will orbit the planet.
The effect you're after might be semi-plausible in another form, though. It's
tough to guess because I can't be sure *why* you want the star to orbit the
planet.
[...]
> > And unfortunately, spinning your "planet" won't help. (Note that
> > neutron stars are known to spin *very* quickly. Like thousands of
> > rotations per second. Give them magnetic fields, and they become
> > pulsars.) Even if you spin it, you can't spin the poles. They
> > collapse under their own weight, and you wind up with a pancake or a
> > doughnut instead of a planet. Neither of those are terribly stable.
> > The planet still falls into itself and pulls the hole in afterwards.
>
> Now that's interesting. If that's the case, isnt gravity on the poles much
> stronger than anywhere else in the world, even on our world?
No. Even in the example given, the gravity doesn't change (directly) because
of the spin--it's just balanced, to varying extent, by the centrifugal force
from the spin. The reason the poles collapse in that example is because they
don't experience any significant centrifugal force, so they bear the full
brunt of the gravity.
In actuality, depending on the material the planet's made from, a really
massive planet spinning at sufficiently high speeds to mostly "cancel out"
the gravity at the equator would probably deform into a plate or torus
(doughnut) just from the spin.
On Earth, the planet's spin isn't fast enough to have much effect on gravity,
as far as we're likely to notice it. Also, the Earth isn't a precise
sphere--it's an oblate spheroid. It's partly deformed due to its spin, as I
outlined above, and partly toward the southern pole (if I remember correctly)
because of the sun's gravitational pull.
> And how could a planet "fall into itself"? Where does the matter go?
It may just get compacted down. "Falling into itself" means collapsing; all
the matter goes somewhere, far as we know. It will mostly be crushed into
denser forms. If there's sufficient mass, a black hole will eventually
result, but no planet will likely have that much mass.
> And could a planet actually exist in a shape other than a sphere?
Yes, especially if you're open-minded about what a "planet" is or if you're
picky about what a "sphere" is. For example, as I said, the Earth is not
precisely a sphere. Moreover, non-spherical planet-like objects have been
the subject of many SF stories. Niven's Ringworld series, his "Flare Time"
(if I recall the name of the story accurately), and his essay "Bigger than
Worlds" are pretty accessible, for example. My latest book, which I'd call
science-fantasy, occurs in a bigger-than-worlds setting that's scientifically
plausible.
> > I think you wind up with something super-dense no matter what you try.
>
> What exactly does super-dense mean? And what I'm talking about is a planet
> about the size of Jupiter, with a sun appropriately sized.
I believe what's meant is "almost certainly too dense for your story." The
sun is enormous, even compared to Jupiter.
It's occurring to me that maybe you'd be best off with a planet just a little
bigger than Earth, maybe twice as big, but less dense and so with comparable
gravity, and a very small, *artificial* sun about the size of the moon, maybe
a little further away. That, I guess, could happen, given sufficient
hand-waving technology. I don't know what the artificial sun would exactly
be, but it's more likely than a habitable planet larger than Jupiter with a
small sun orbiting around it.
> > Or, I might choose to scrap scientific realism altogether. It *is*
> > just a tool. Knowing that what you're doing is impossible is no reason
> > not to do it. Otherwise, what's the point in dreaming of publication?
>
> Bah. The story is fantasy, but it's fairly logical fantasy. They have some
> limited technology based on gravity and kinetics, and they have advanced
> astronomical studies, so it wouldnt fly to try to suggest they're too
> stupid to realize that what's happening is impossible...
I'd suggest an artificial sun, then. It wouldn't be the end of the world if
the characters in the book figured out that the sun was artificial but never
found out who made it or how.
John Kensmark
kens...@hotmail.com
Dorothy J Heydt
Jake Hartline <mor...@uvic.ca> wrote:
>
> One might also consider linguistic competence - the ability, in
>part, to form an unlimited number of utterances in a given language.
Not entirely unlimited, because the number of elements are finite
and so are their possible combinations--but large.
(whacks brain) There's a line from Tolkien which somebody around
here uses as a .sig, about the enormous creative potential of the
*adjective*, which by unexpected combination allows you to put
hot fire in the belly of the cold worm.
(And I began by typing "cold fire in the belly of the" and that's
a new combination right there, or new to me anyway....)
>I'd be willing to bet no one has heard or read the following sentence
>anywhere:
>
>There are six elephants in this reading room whose ivory I desire for
>teacups.
The example we used to use in the Linguistic department--to
demonstrate the point you are making, that a speaker of a given
language can instantly construct and/or understand an utterance
nobody has ever heard before-- is "I never saw a green horse
smoke a dozen oranges." (But of course by the end of the
semester we had all heard it several times.)
I like yours better. It's rather poetic. I don't think you
could get a plot out of it by itself, but it would be a marvelous
opening line out of the mouth of a character whom you wish to
depict as strangely and wonderfully weird.
(So go write it, why don't you?)
The points to be made, I think, are,
(1) Any given human is unlikely ever to come up with a
*really*new* idea;
(2) Most of the ideas we do get are new (or newish, or at least
fairly rare) combinations of ideas already in circulation;
(2a) And therefore it is unrealistic for any of us, either to
steal ideas or to worry that ours might be stolen;
(2a.1) (Because mostly we get them from our common environment,
which is why so many people come up with almost identical plot
ideas which they got from the latest episode of Star Trek);
(3) Because, in any case, it's almost never the ideas you've got
to work with, but *what you do with them,* that will make your
story sink or swim.
Dorothy J Heydt
>It occurs to me that all you really need is a way for the
>people on the planet to justify saying the star revolves
>around the planet. Well, you don't actually need to do
>in the system....
Sam, you don't even need to do that. Consider that Earth has
been going around Sol for the past four and a half billion years
and we only realized it a few centuries or so. It takes a while
to put together a culture in which at least some people are
sufficiently well-fed and secure to spend a lot of time observing
minute astronomical phenomena and begin to question assumptions.
If the geocentric model is sufficient to keep track of the
calendar so you can sow turnips twenty-fifty of July, wet or dry
(and it does), then your basic turnip farmer is not going to be
motivated to look for another model that better explains the tiny
sub-motions of the planet Mars.
I'm still waiting to hear back from Shinyhat on just why he needs
a geocentric universe. Maybe when he does, we can find a model
that won't violate too much physics while giving him the kind of
environment he wants.
Matthew F Johnson
>> In article <01bdfac3$212547e0$fd26c8cc@n>, "Shinyhat"
>>
>> > In my book, the solar system is set up very differently. I have the
> main
>> > planet, Alna, as an extremely large planet, so large that it is the
> center
>> > of the solar system, and all the other planets, including the sun,
> revolve
> way to
>> > much gravity to support normal life, so I have it spinning much faster
> than
>> > normal planets to counteract the gravity. That would work right?
> Basically,
>> > I'm trying to set it up just right so that the environment on the
> planet
>> > would be pretty much the same as here on earth.
>> > sort of situation.Like some sort of strange effect that would happen
> ever
>> > once in a while, caused by the unusual solar setup. Any contributions
> would
>> > be helpful, and please, don't steal this idea to put it in your own
> book.
>> > That would be dishonorable and lame.
>> > Thanks
>>
>> thrown in. Your basic problem is one of physics. There is a mass
>> threshold that any object must pass in order to begin nuclear fusion
>> processes and become a star. Below that threshold the object can be a
>> planet. In a system with a star and planets and lacking a black hole,
>> that star will be the most massive object in the system. In a simple
>> system like our own it will be impossible for a star to orbit a
>> conventional planet. You could begin to consider a complex binary
> system,
>> but be very careful. I've never said this on the usenet before, but you
>> might want to consult a physicist.
>
> Hm...so you mean that any heavenly body that is a certain size will
> *become* a star, even if it was supposed to be a planet, and no object
> below a certain size would be capable of being a star? Hm...that is a
> problem isnt it.
> Leif suggested I could have the planet be stuck between a star and a black
> hole...what do you think about that? What about the black hole's time
> distortion and stuff? Wouldnt it screw up magnetics, gravity, etc?
I think people would have a much easier time answering this if we
knew a bit more about *why* you need things the way they are. Could this
system be artificially created (some weird artifact at the core of the
planet that creates this impossible situation)? Could it be a world where
physics is just different, and masses orbit not other masses but an
arbitrary "centre point" where your planet just happens to be?
--
Matthew F. Johnson
Oh, put another nickel in, in the Necronomicon
All I want is lovin' you and evil, evil, evil
Jake Hartline
Heydt) wrote:
>(whacks brain) There's a line from Tolkien which somebody around
>here uses as a .sig, about the enormous creative potential of the
>*adjective*, which by unexpected combination allows you to put
>hot fire in the belly of the cold worm.
As a brief aside - it's been so long since I read Tolkien that I
quite forget the nature of his prose. What say, group - is LOTR worth
re-reading as an adult?
>The example we used to use in the Linguistic department--to
>demonstrate the point you are making, that a speaker of a given
>language can instantly construct and/or understand an utterance
>nobody has ever heard before-- is "I never saw a green horse
>smoke a dozen oranges." (But of course by the end of the
>semester we had all heard it several times.)
>
>I like yours better. It's rather poetic. I don't think you
>could get a plot out of it by itself, but it would be a marvelous
>opening line out of the mouth of a character whom you wish to
>depict as strangely and wonderfully weird.
Well, dadaism may be a cool thing to be interested in - but I don't
write it - because I can't. Said the quick brown fox to the lazy dog.
Something to think of, however!
>(So go write it, why don't you?)
>The points to be made, I think, are,
>
>(1) Any given human is unlikely ever to come up with a
>*really*new* idea;
The two short stories I'm working on now(your suggestion is in the
ideas queue) are indeed new flesh on old bones. As has been asserted
by others, I feel the flesh makes the story. My favourite book of all
time is certainly Margaret Wise Brown's "Goodnight Moon" - in which
the core idea has doubtless been in the folk tradition for eons, but
Brown's presentation delights me every time.
Other favourite writers of mine take -terribly- stock ideas and
merely adapt them to poetic language. I'm especially thinking of
Angela Carter. In one of her short story collections, "The Bloody
Chamber", she takes classical fairy tales and retells them without so
much as an ounce of novelty, save what is fresh in her use of English.
(Mind you, "Black Venus" is much better.)(Good old Angie Carter - more
proof that purple prose can indeed be sold!)
As for my stories, well.. how many of our mothers, and our friends,
and us, have written of a boy meeting a girl by a mailbox? Or perhaps
on a crossroads.. one of mine has such a opening scene(not the story
focus), and I feel no fear that it'll hold back my creativity. Old
bones, new flesh.
>(2) Most of the ideas we do get are new (or newish, or at least
>fairly rare) combinations of ideas already in circulation;
Agreed.
> (2a) And therefore it is unrealistic for any of us, either to
> steal ideas or to worry that ours might be stolen;
Agreed - anyone can have a brilliant idea - it's all in what one does
with it.
> (2a.1) (Because mostly we get them from our common environment,
> which is why so many people come up with almost identical plot
> ideas which they got from the latest episode of Star Trek);
>(3) Because, in any case, it's almost never the ideas you've got
>to work with, but *what you do with them,* that will make your
>story sink or swim.
I'm so glad we agree.
Jake
mor...@uvic.ca
Lance Purple
>In my book, the solar system is set up very differently. I have the main
>planet, Alna, as an extremely large planet, so large that it is the center
>of the solar system, and all the other planets, including the sun, revolve
>around it. Now I'm trying to see if there are any major logic problems
[...] snip
The most plausible way to do this would be to have Alna be a Dyson Sphere.
..'''.. surface
. . of Alna
: core :
: (*) : o . . (*) star #2
: star : planets
' '
''...''
You'd have a star inside the sphere (never seen by the Alnans, it's just
to provide gravity and electrical power), the sphere itself (covered with
power collectors on the inside; and with people and trees on the outside),
and then another star and assorted planets orbiting Alna (for decoration
and possibly helps to keep Alna's surface centered about the core-star).
The only thing implausible about this setup is the material strength that
the sphere needs to keep from crumpling up and collapsing into the core-
star. You can get around this by having "active supports" -- big tubes
that criss-cross the underside of the sphere, full of small iron weights
that are whirling about the core-star at faster than orbital velocity,
so that the outward centrifugal force holds up the tubes and the sphere.
Anyway, good luck with your story. (Oh, and I herby grant you permission
to use my idea freely without anyone calling you a thief or lamer ;)
.----------------------------.
| lpurple at netcom dot com |
'----------------------------'
pa...@webnexus.com
"Rachael M. Lininger" <lini...@virtu.sar.usf.edu> wrote:
> If there were such a think as ownership of ideas,
There are, known as "patents" and in a more limited sense,
"trademarks". "Copyrights" of course only cover a specific
expression of an idea into a fixed form (like print or a
recording).
Sam Paik
pa...@webnexus.com
<dragan.m...@si.tel.hr> wrote:
> Actually, the appearance of the sun orbiting the planet is caused by the
> fact that the planet revolves.
> The fact that planet orbits the sun can be noticed only by the fact that the
> sun moves WRT the stars.
Right. Ok, remove all the other stars. *now* you can't tell which
"orbits" which. Now we have problems of stellar formation as well,
but again, we have an advanced alien civilization going around
and snuffing out the other stars in the galaxy or transporting
the star and planet out into intergalactic space.
I suppose some of the nearby galaxies may be visible to the
unaided eye though.
atlas
> Ok, first of all, I wrote that under the assumption that my idea would indeed
> work. And obviously, if I had an interesting concept that I haven't seen
> before, I would rather someone didn't take it and put it in their own book,
> thereby lessening the impact of mine should it ever get published. I mean, if
> released soon after that had the exact same concepts and plotline that you
> were going to do, wouldn't you be a bit upset if you knew that someone stole
> it from you off the newsgroup?
>
Ideas are cheap and easy. Expression of ideas is hard. How about thisã a
desert planet inhabited by giant worms. Run with it.
Moralã don't fall in love with your log lines. Don't get paranoid that
your great idea will automatically yield a great book.
And know that sci fi isn't about setting. It's about character and story.
atlas
Jo Walton
lini...@virtu.sar.usf.edu "Rachael M. Lininger" writes:
> If you really think you have an idea no one has seen before and don't
> want anyone else to get ideas from it, then don't post it. And for
> god's sake don't post it asking for help with it--how can it be "your"
> idea anymore, since you've had other people work on it? If there were
> such a think as ownership of ideas, I think it would include working
> them out yourself. But you're unlikely to have a really new idea.
I think this is very sensible advice.
I have posted things and then had people email me and say could they
use them - actually more on rasfw than here, but then rasfw's been
around longer.
The oddest thing like that though was on rasfw when for some reason
we were discussing Christian heresies and somebody (maybe Nancy)
wanted a new one, and I thought of one, and posted it in detail,
and then the day after or the day after that realised that it was
what I needed for the story I was working on (the one I've now sold
to Patrick) not as a heresy but as the way things worked in that world.
This gives the idea a very odd looking provenance - I mean it's all
mine, but it was posted before I realised what else I could do with it.
That's the only time I've ever felt like saying "hey, this idea's mine
and I want it, hands off!"
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Blood of Kings Poetry; rasfw FAQ;
Reviews; Interstichia; Momentum - a paying market for real poetry.
Jo Walton
mor...@uvic.ca "Jake Hartline" writes:
> As a brief aside - it's been so long since I read Tolkien that I
> quite forget the nature of his prose. What say, group - is LOTR worth
> re-reading as an adult?
Yes. A thousand times yes. The only reason for not so doing would be
if you love reading modern epic fantasy, because Tolkien does tend
to make so much other fantasy look thin and pale and feeble in
comparison.
Also read his essays, especially "On Fairy Stories" but his others as
well.
They're some of the best things that have ever been written about
creativity and the wellsprings of the fantastic.
Dorothy J Heydt
Jake Hartline <mor...@uvic.ca> wrote:
> As a brief aside - it's been so long since I read Tolkien that I
>quite forget the nature of his prose. What say, group - is LOTR worth
>re-reading as an adult?
Oh, yes.
If you're coming to it as an adult, after a long absence, don't
start with _The Hobbit._ (Unless you have children in the six-to-twelve
range and want to read it to them.) Start with _The Fellowship of
the Ring)_ and look cautiously at the introductions. If you
don't have a taste for well-crafted imitation scholarly essays,
let them alone and move on to Chapter One. If the bucolic
hobbits, complete with traditional class distinctions, seem a
little odd to you, pretend you're reading a Breughel painting as
described by Jane Austen, and keep reading. The plot elements
start playing peep-bo with you toward the end of Chapter One and
make their formal appearance in Chapter Two. After that, just
read.
William Burns
wrote:
>Are those books of Clement and Forward fictional works, or physics type
>books? Are they sci-fi or fantasy?
_Mission of Gravity_ by Hal Clement
_Dragon's Egg_ by Robert L. Forward
Science Fiction both. Considered Hard SF at that. Clement was not a
scientist, iirc, but he researched his ideas to ensure they were
plausible. Forward - I met him at a Calgary con many years back and
he described himself as merely an 'electrician'. Everyone else thinks
of him as a physicist. Like Clement, his ideas were plausible at the
time of writing.
Your star system is not. Magic, therefore, must keep it afloat.
Either that or the system is, as Hal Heydt points out, ptolemaic.
That would put your planet not only as the centre of the star system,
but the centre of the universe itself. Still keeps it as a magical
system; but a Divine magical system.
Hmmmm! All other star systems could be as we know them to be. That
would mean, in your universe, Ptolemy was right. He just mistook
Earth for the centre rather than your own Alna.
(Posted and e-mailed)
- William
"Every wise man loves his own cat, but
even the foolish love other people's kittens."
---Robert Lynd
Shinyhat
pa...@webnexus.com wrote in article <70f1fl$d9r$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
> It occurs to me that all you really need is a way for the
> people on the planet to justify saying the star revolves
> around the planet. Well, you don't actually need to do
> very much, just make that one planet be the only planet
> in the system. Then there would not be any niggling
> points of light in the sky which reverse directions
> during the year. A model that had the star orbiting
> the planet would be as simple and just as accurate as
> a model that had the planet orbiting the star.
No no no. The book is fantasy, but the people here are smart. Really smart.
They have all sorts of technology based on gravity and kinetics, as well as
steam, and they also have VERY advanced astronomical study tools. They're
not cavemen, that's for sure, so the system has to be very rational.
--
§ Shinyhat §
Proud Proprietor of Left Handedness.
Hater of Sir Launcelot
Friend of Sir Gawain
kens...@hotmail.com
mor...@uvic.ca wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Oct 1998 14:35:13 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
> Heydt) wrote:
>
> >(whacks brain) There's a line from Tolkien which somebody around
> >here uses as a .sig, about the enormous creative potential of the
> >*adjective*, which by unexpected combination allows you to put
> >hot fire in the belly of the cold worm.
>
> quite forget the nature of his prose. What say, group - is LOTR worth
> re-reading as an adult?
I dunno. Why not try it? I re-read _Fellowship of the Ring_ a number of
years ago. I'd read all four of the major books as a kid and liked them very
much, but I didn't like (or finish, rare for me) _The Silmarillion_ when I
was in high school. When I re-read _Fellowship_, I really enjoyed it, but
then _Two Towers_ annoyed me, and reading it was a struggle because I really
wasn't interested, and I put it down and wandered off.
I occasionally used to read books just because I figured it was a Good Idea
to have read them, or because they were such a big deal with everyone else
(or many others, anyway). I think I went on enough about my adventures with
Heinlein already. Suffice to say that I don't bother anymore. But see for
yourself.
John Kensmark
kens...@hotmail.com
kens...@hotmail.com
J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk wrote:
[...]
> The oddest thing like that though was on rasfw when for some reason
> we were discussing Christian heresies and somebody (maybe Nancy)
> wanted a new one, and I thought of one, and posted it in detail,
I'm so sorry I missed that. I'm an heresiarch myself (that's what I tell
people when they ask what my religion is), and so I'm keenly interested in
other people's heresies. Well, next time 'round.
Shinyhat
Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in article
<F12wu...@kithrup.com>...
> In article <70f1fl$d9r$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <pa...@webnexus.com> wrote:
> >It occurs to me that all you really need is a way for the
> >people on the planet to justify saying the star revolves
> >around the planet. Well, you don't actually need to do
> >very much, just make that one planet be the only planet
> >in the system....
>
> Sam, you don't even need to do that. Consider that Earth has
> been going around Sol for the past four and a half billion years
> and we only realized it a few centuries or so. It takes a while
> to put together a culture in which at least some people are
> sufficiently well-fed and secure to spend a lot of time observing
> minute astronomical phenomena and begin to question assumptions.
> If the geocentric model is sufficient to keep track of the
> calendar so you can sow turnips twenty-fifty of July, wet or dry
> (and it does), then your basic turnip farmer is not going to be
> motivated to look for another model that better explains the tiny
> sub-motions of the planet Mars.
>
> I'm still waiting to hear back from Shinyhat on just why he needs
> a geocentric universe. Maybe when he does, we can find a model
> that won't violate too much physics while giving him the kind of
> environment he wants.
Several reasons. One, is it just adds an interesting twist to the workings
of the world, such as judging years by rotations of the sun, etc. The
others are very practical. During the story, an extremely catastrophic
event is going to happen that disrupts all the planetary cycles including
the sun's, totally rearranging the way everything works. Also, the world in
question is an extremely important world, the last world that will ever be
created, and the stage for the conflict that ends it all, so it wouldnt do
to have it just another rock flying around with all the rest.
Now I'm intrigued by Leif Brown's proposition, of having the planet stuck
between a supergiant star and a black hole, and I'm trying to work out a
system like that. If I could get that to work, that would be much better
even than my original plan, because having two suns, a dark sun and a light
sun, offers interesting new plot possibilities.
Shinyhat
kens...@hotmail.com wrote in article <70fmnc$9am$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
Is it *possible* to have a Jupiter sized planet made of earth and rock
though?
> The effect you're after might be semi-plausible in another form, though.
It's
> tough to guess because I can't be sure *why* you want the star to orbit
the
> planet.
Several reasons. One, is it just adds an interesting twist to the workings
of the world, such as judging years by rotations of the sun, etc. The
others are very practical. During the story, an extremely catastrophic
event is going to happen that disrupts all the planetary cycles including
the sun's, totally rearranging the way everything works. Also, the world in
question is an extremely important world, the last world that will ever be
created, and the stage for the conflict that ends it all, so it wouldnt do
to have it just another rock flying around with all the rest.
Now I'm intrigued by Leif Brown's proposition, of having the planet stuck
between a supergiant star and a black hole, and I'm trying to work out a
system like that. If I could get that to work, that would be much better
even than my original plan, because having two suns, a dark sun and a light
sun, offers interesting new plot possibilities.
>
> No. Even in the example given, the gravity doesn't change (directly)
because
> of the spin--it's just balanced, to varying extent, by the centrifugal
force
> from the spin. The reason the poles collapse in that example is because
they
> don't experience any significant centrifugal force, so they bear the full
> brunt of the gravity.
Right, so in a really large planet, creatures on it would *feel* alot more
gravity at the poles right? So say I had a planet roughly the size
of...say...Uranus..maybe saturn. If its spinning fast enough to create
livable gravity in most areas, then if someone went to the equator, they
would weigh very little? And if they went to the poles, they'd probably be
smashed?
>
>
> > And could a planet actually exist in a shape other than a sphere?
>
> Yes, especially if you're open-minded about what a "planet" is or if
you're
> picky about what a "sphere" is. For example, as I said, the Earth is not
> precisely a sphere. Moreover, non-spherical planet-like objects have
been
> the subject of many SF stories. Niven's Ringworld series, his "Flare
Time"
> (if I recall the name of the story accurately), and his essay "Bigger
than
> Worlds" are pretty accessible, for example. My latest book, which I'd
call
> science-fantasy, occurs in a bigger-than-worlds setting that's
scientifically
> plausible.
Hm..interesting. So you could actually have, say, a disc shaped planet that
rotates and functions normally?? So then...the world would be flat, right?
You could walk off the edge of the world!
> It's occurring to me that maybe you'd be best off with a planet just a
little
> bigger than Earth, maybe twice as big, but less dense and so with
comparable
> gravity, and a very small, *artificial* sun about the size of the moon,
maybe
> a little further away. That, I guess, could happen, given sufficient
> hand-waving technology. I don't know what the artificial sun would
exactly
> be, but it's more likely than a habitable planet larger than Jupiter with
a
> small sun orbiting around it.
I thought about that, but I think I like the blackhole/supergiant idea
better, if it'll work, that is.
Dorothy J Heydt
Shinyhat <shin...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm still waiting to hear back from Shinyhat on just why he needs
>
>Several reasons. One, is it just adds an interesting twist to the workings
>of the world, such as judging years by rotations of the sun, etc.
But that's going to have no functional difference from judging
years on Earth.
(In the opening segment of _The Day the Universe Changed,_ James
Burke quotes a conversation between a naive student and the
philosopher Wittgenstein. Student: "How foolish our ancestors were
to think the sun revolved around the earth!" Wittgenstein: "Yes,
but consider: if the sun did revolve around the earth, what would
it have looked like?" The answer is, of course, that it would
look exactly the same to the not-very-observant eye.)
>The
>others are very practical. During the story, an extremely catastrophic
>event is going to happen that disrupts all the planetary cycles including
>the sun's, totally rearranging the way everything works.
Do you want anybody to survive to tell the tale? Then these
catastrophes had better not be quite as catastrophic as that.
I can think of one you can use for an exceedingly Earthlike
planet--one that will happen to Earth someday. Give the planet a
large moon--really, a small companion planet--like ours. Ours,
having once been much closer in, has been drifting steadily
outward for a long time. (This has provided some interesting
effects in tidal stresses and day lengths.) Eventually it'll
reach the end of its gravitational tether and start drifting back
inward. When it gets close enough it will reach Roche's limit
and break up into a ring like Saturn's. But before that happens,
the tidal stresses on *Earth* will be sufficient to tear large
chunks out of the crust and send them hurtling upward. Mostly in
the high latitudes. Mind you, this is a *very*long* time in our
future. But you could juggle some numbers to make it happen
sooner to your planet.
Also, the world in
>question is an extremely important world, the last world that will ever be
>created, and the stage for the conflict that ends it all,
I see, this is where the fantasy kicks in. Okay. But *any*
world is going to be very, very important to the people living on
it, so you don't strictly need for it to be of such cosmic
significance to the rest of created things. Unless you want to,
which apparently you do.
>so it wouldn't do
>to have it just another rock flying around with all the rest.
See above. If this is *our* planet under the knife, then it
doesn't matter to us how many other planets there are out there
somewhere. Particularly if we can't escape to them.
How large a universe are you working with? Is it just that one
stellar system?
>Now I'm intrigued by Leif Brown's proposition, of having the planet stuck
>between a supergiant star and a black hole, and I'm trying to work out a
>system like that. If I could get that to work, that would be much better
>even than my original plan, because having two suns, a dark sun and a light
>sun, offers interesting new plot possibilities.
Yes, so far as that goes. You may wish to have a red dwarf
rather than a black hole, though, because black hole/star binaries
are of very short lifespans and would probably not be hospitable to
life.
Hal gave me a long description of how a system of that kind forms
while we were driving up to get the cat out of the vet's; but
now I've forgotten the details. I'll see if I can get him to
repeat it when he gets home. In the meantime, trust me that any
life on a planet between those two stars would get fried when the
first star went off-sequence.
Maybe you could have instead a main-sequence star and a brown
dwarf which would radiate only faintly--if your people can see
into the infrared, they could see it when the real sun was not in
the sky, and might call it a "dark sun."
Dorothy J Heydt
William Burns <wbu...@geraldton.lakeheadu.ca> wrote:
>
>...Considered Hard SF at that. Clement was not a
>scientist, iirc,
Well, borderline. He taught science at a private high school.
Dorothy J Heydt
Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>This gives the idea a very odd looking provenance - I mean it's all
>mine, but it was posted before I realised what else I could do with it.
>That's the only time I've ever felt like saying "hey, this idea's mine
>and I want it, hands off!"
And yet, you know, if somebody else had used it too they would
have come up with so completely different a story that you
probably wouldn't really have minded after the fact.
By analogy, I have an idea that is *relatively* uncommon as such
things go, which I'm going to use in the varvel story, which
comes after I finish the VR stories. I'm not going to discuss it
because, like Jo, I'd rather play with it myself first. But it
isn't original with me; I got it from a short film called _The
Sand Castle/Le Chateau de Sable_ by Co Hoederman. Make of that
what you will.
John VanSickle
>
> Hm...so you mean that any heavenly body that is a certain size will
> *become* a star, even if it was supposed to be a planet,
What do you mean, "supposed to be a planet?"
"Hey! I ordered a class-M! What's this main sequence doing here?"
Regards,
John
--
"Have the manners not to be hittin' the man until he's your husband, and
entitled to hit back!"
Brenda Clough
Jonathan W Hendry wrote:
> kens...@hotmail.com wrote:
> > I dunno. Why not try it? I re-read _Fellowship of the Ring_ a number of
> > years ago. I'd read all four of the major books as a kid and liked them very
> > much, but I didn't like (or finish, rare for me) _The Silmarillion_ when I
> > was in high school. When I re-read _Fellowship_, I really enjoyed it, but
> > then _Two Towers_ annoyed me, and reading it was a struggle because I really
> > wasn't interested, and I put it down and wandered off.
>
> I've been thinking of picking up LOTR, since my old copies have long
> since disappeared. Unfortunately, I'm utterly turned off by the latest
> cover art, including that Buddy Hackett-esque hobbit on one of them.
>
> Is there an edition out that isn't tainted with the lame cover art?
>
As I recall, the British editions are in better taste.
Brenda <always loathed the Hildebrandt art>
--
Brenda W. Clough, author of HOW LIKE A GOD from Tor Books
<clo...@erols.com> http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
atlas
> Right, so in a really large planet, creatures on it would *feel* alot more
> gravity at the poles right? So say I had a planet roughly the size
> of...say...Uranus..maybe saturn. If its spinning fast enough to create
> livable gravity in most areas, then if someone went to the equator, they
> would weigh very little? And if they went to the poles, they'd probably be
> smashed?
No, gravity is not cancelled by centrifugal force.
atlas
Jonathan W Hendry
> I dunno. Why not try it? I re-read _Fellowship of the Ring_ a number of
> years ago. I'd read all four of the major books as a kid and liked them very
> much, but I didn't like (or finish, rare for me) _The Silmarillion_ when I
> was in high school. When I re-read _Fellowship_, I really enjoyed it, but
> then _Two Towers_ annoyed me, and reading it was a struggle because I really
> wasn't interested, and I put it down and wandered off.
I've been thinking of picking up LOTR, since my old copies have long
since disappeared. Unfortunately, I'm utterly turned off by the latest
cover art, including that Buddy Hackett-esque hobbit on one of them.
Is there an edition out that isn't tainted with the lame cover art?
--
Note: email to this address goes to /dev/null
To email a reply, write to jon at exnext dot com
Shinyhat
Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in article
<F13H8...@kithrup.com>...
> In article <01bdfba7$569111e0$f126c8cc@n>,
> Shinyhat <shin...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I'm still waiting to hear back from Shinyhat on just why he needs
> >> a geocentric universe....
> >
> >Several reasons. One, is it just adds an interesting twist to the
workings
> >of the world, such as judging years by rotations of the sun, etc.
>
> But that's going to have no functional difference from judging
> years on Earth.
Right, but it makes an interesting twist I think.
> (In the opening segment of _The Day the Universe Changed,_ James
> Burke quotes a conversation between a naive student and the
> philosopher Wittgenstein. Student: "How foolish our ancestors were
> to think the sun revolved around the earth!" Wittgenstein: "Yes,
> but consider: if the sun did revolve around the earth, what would
> it have looked like?" The answer is, of course, that it would
> look exactly the same to the not-very-observant eye.)
>
> >The
> >others are very practical. During the story, an extremely catastrophic
> >event is going to happen that disrupts all the planetary cycles
including
> >the sun's, totally rearranging the way everything works.
>
> Do you want anybody to survive to tell the tale? Then these
> catastrophes had better not be quite as catastrophic as that.
It's not a natural catastrophe though. Its a sort of "disrupting wave"
thing that goes through the universe and just generally unmakes order. So
it doesnt actually blow up the solar system, it just messes it up.
> Also, the world in
> >question is an extremely important world, the last world that will ever
be
> >created, and the stage for the conflict that ends it all,
>
> I see, this is where the fantasy kicks in. Okay. But *any*
> world is going to be very, very important to the people living on
> it, so you don't strictly need for it to be of such cosmic
> significance to the rest of created things. Unless you want to,
> which apparently you do.
Yeah, I do. And since its the last world to be created, the Creator wouldnt
want to make it just your ordinary solar system that he's been making for
eons.
>
> >so it wouldn't do
> >to have it just another rock flying around with all the rest.
>
> See above. If this is *our* planet under the knife, then it
> doesn't matter to us how many other planets there are out there
> somewhere. Particularly if we can't escape to them.
It's not our planet though.
>
> How large a universe are you working with? Is it just that one
> stellar system?
That's pretty much all that's mentioned. I mean, the universe is infinite,
but the story takes place in this one solar system.
> >Now I'm intrigued by Leif Brown's proposition, of having the planet
stuck
> >between a supergiant star and a black hole, and I'm trying to work out a
> >system like that. If I could get that to work, that would be much better
> >even than my original plan, because having two suns, a dark sun and a
light
> >sun, offers interesting new plot possibilities.
>
> Yes, so far as that goes. You may wish to have a red dwarf
> rather than a black hole, though, because black hole/star binaries
> are of very short lifespans and would probably not be hospitable to
> life.
Well the lifespan part wouldnt be a problem, because I'm sure if these
systems were arranged with absolute divine perfection, they could be made
to last a long time. I'm curious what living conditions would be like
though. Why wouldnt it be hospitable?
>
> Hal gave me a long description of how a system of that kind forms
> while we were driving up to get the cat out of the vet's; but
> now I've forgotten the details. I'll see if I can get him to
> repeat it when he gets home. In the meantime, trust me that any
> life on a planet between those two stars would get fried when the
> first star went off-sequence.
Well that's why the stars would have to *not* go off sequence. :-)
Actually, with this new idea, I've changed my plans a little. In the end,
the main planet will get nudged slightly by some big time collisions, and
start drifting toward the black hole now that it's allignment is upset.
>
> Maybe you could have instead a main-sequence star and a brown
> dwarf which would radiate only faintly--if your people can see
> into the infrared, they could see it when the real sun was not in
> the sky, and might call it a "dark sun."
That really wouldnt have the same effect though. I mean..a brown dwarf? Not
nearly as imposing as a black hole. Besides, I'm intrigued by the idea of
having a night sky where they'd look up and see this big black hole looming
in the sky. Could make for some interesting descriptions, especially
because both the star and the black hole are going to take on religious
significance, the black hole being "the Void" and the star being the "Holy
Eye" or "Creator's Eye".
Kemnitzer,Trollman
>In article <908821...@bluejo.demon.co.uk>,
> J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk wrote:
>[...]
>> The oddest thing like that though was on rasfw when for some reason
>> we were discussing Christian heresies and somebody (maybe Nancy)
>> wanted a new one, and I thought of one, and posted it in detail,
>
>I'm so sorry I missed that. I'm an heresiarch myself (that's what I tell
>people when they ask what my religion is), and so I'm keenly interested in
>other people's heresies. Well, next time 'round.
>
I told my students that you can only correctly call a person a heretic
if the person believes a variant of the same thing the
heretic-defining folks believe. Like, I couldn't correctly be called a
heretic, for example. Was I right? (I was trying to get through a
pile of vocabulary for _The Witch of Blackbird Pond_, which they hate)
Lucy Kemnitzer
Dorothy J Heydt
Jonathan W Hendry <jhe...@shrike.depaul.edu> wrote:
>
>Is there an edition out that isn't tainted with the lame cover art?
One of the previous Ballantine paperback editions had Tolkien's
own watercolors as cover art. Those editions are out of print
now--and the current ones are worse than lame, they're ghastly--
but you might haunt used bookstores. The editions I like (of
1978 or thereabouts) show as follows:
The Hobbit: Bilbo arrives at the Long Lake by barrel
The Fellowship of the Ring: Bag End in Hobbiton
The Two Towers: Shadows under the trees in Fangorn Forest
The Return of the King: The base of the Dark Tower, with
Mount Doom in the distance
Fine stuff.
Dorothy J Heydt
John VanSickle <vans...@erols.com> wrote:
>Shinyhat wrote:
>>
>> Hm...so you mean that any heavenly body that is a certain size will
>> *become* a star, even if it was supposed to be a planet,
>
>What do you mean, "supposed to be a planet?"
I think he means, he wanted to put a planet in the center of his
solar system.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that....
>"Hey! I ordered a class-M! What's this main sequence doing here?"
(chortle)
Dorothy J Heydt
Shinyhat <shin...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
>
>> See above. If this is *our* planet under the knife, then it
>> doesn't matter to us how many other planets there are out there
>> somewhere. Particularly if we can't escape to them.
>
>It's not our planet though.
Nitpick. If it's *their* planet, then it isn't going to matter
to *them* how many other planets are about. Or at least, it's
not going to be any consolation to them.
>Well the lifespan part wouldnt be a problem, because I'm sure if these
>systems were arranged with absolute divine perfection, they could be made
>to last a long time.
Um, already you're not talking about our universe. This one
has definitely not been created to be perfect, nor to be a setting
in which solar systems have long lifetimes on a cosmic scale.
Stars age, they go off the main sequence, if small, they become
bloated red giants and eat their planets, then condense into
various other forms; if large, they become supernovae, blowing
part of their mass all over the landscape (and causing shock
waves which eventually cause interstellar dust and gas to drift
into accretions that collapse into planetary disks that become
new solar systems) and allowing the rest to condense into various
other forms.
>I'm curious what living conditions would be like
>though. Why wouldnt it be hospitable?
Radiation of various kinds sleeting through the system. Tidal
instabilities. The fact that such a system will a short lifespan,
so that there isn't time for life to develop on a planet in the
vicinity before it gets swallowed by the black hole, engulfed by
the star, or just fried.
>Well that's why the stars would have to *not* go off sequence. :-)
>Actually, with this new idea, I've changed my plans a little. In the end,
>the main planet will get nudged slightly by some big time collisions, and
>start drifting toward the black hole now that its allignment is upset.
Oh-kay, you can perhaps make that work. So long as you put it in
a universe, unlike this one, where the rules are different.
>Besides, I'm intrigued by the idea of
>having a night sky where they'd look up and see this big black hole looming
>in the sky. Could make for some interesting descriptions, especially
>because both the star and the black hole are going to take on religious
>significance, the black hole being "the Void" and the star being the "Holy
>Eye" or "Creator's Eye".
They wouldn't see the black hole directly. (I mean, it's a
singularity from which nothing can escape, including light.)
What you would see would be the dust and luminous gas being
sucked out of the companion star (see if you can find some
astronomy books with an artist's conception of Mira Ceti, which
will give you an idea), swirling around the black hole till it
finally disappears into a black dot that might or might not be
visible.
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
> As a brief aside - it's been so long since I read Tolkien that I
>quite forget the nature of his prose. What say, group - is LOTR worth
>re-reading as an adult?
Of course it is. Lots of people read it as adults for the first
time. C.S. Lewis, say. He was quite impressed.
But it won't be the same book it was when you read it as a child, or a
teenager, or whatever. Just don't blame the book for that.
I read LOTR every fall from the age of fifteen until the age of about
thirty-five, when I became less rigid and would occasionally skip a
year or read it in the spring instead; so I'm actually not the best
person to give advice about coming back to it after a gap of years.
In a very real sense I grew up with it. But my experience with
discovering other, less complex and rewarding, books after a span of
time led me to warn you, don't blame the book when it's not the same.
Things that perplexed you then will seem simple; things you didn't
notice at all will loom large, some pleasingly and some not. You may
even have made things up that weren't in the book at all.
--
"Moreover, fantasticality does a good deal better than
sham psychology." -- Virginia Woolf
-----------------------------------------------------------
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet pd...@ddb.com
pa...@webnexus.com
wrote:
> The first three Lagrange pointsm L1, L2, and L3, are (not necessarily
> in that order) between the primary and the secondary; in the same
> orbit as the secondary, but on the opposite side of the primary;
> and on the far side of the secondary as seen [or rather, not
> seen] from the primary.
Minor nit, the second orbit above isn't in the same orbit as the
secondary (at least, Eric's picture doesn't show it to be so
http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~eww6n/physics/LagrangePoints.html).
L1 = between primary and secondary
L2 = beyond secondary
L3 = on other side of primary
SOHO, a spacecraft observing the sun which has been in the
news recently, is at the Sun-Earth L1 point.
The NGST (Next Generation Space Telescope) is intended to be
placed at the Sun-Earth L2 point.
Sam Paik
John D. Owen
> > Heydt) wrote:
> >
> > >(whacks brain) There's a line from Tolkien which somebody around
> > >here uses as a .sig, about the enormous creative potential of the
> > >*adjective*, which by unexpected combination allows you to put
> > >hot fire in the belly of the cold worm.
> >
> > quite forget the nature of his prose. What say, group - is LOTR worth
> > re-reading as an adult?
>
I would say without a doubt he's worth reading, and re-reading
whatever your age. I first read LOTR in the early sixties, and have
re-read him every few years since then. There is a power about that
story, and about the way Tolkien tells it, that epitomises the best of
fantasy writing. Would that all fantasy writers aspired to be as
thorough and as clear in their writing. The tragedy of Tolkien is that
he was never able to produce those other tales of his to the same
length, and to the same standard (The Hobbit excepted, which predated
LOTR). The Silmarillion is much too condensed to work effectively as a
story -- its fascination is in its potential rather than what is
there. The tale of Luthien and Beren alone would make a superb
trilogy's worth of material.
JDO
spa...@my-dejanews.com
"Shinyhat" <shin...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
> In my book, the solar system is set up very differently. I have the main
> planet, Alna, as an extremely large planet, so large that it is the center
> of the solar system, and all the other planets, including the sun, revolve
> around it. Now I'm trying to see if there are any major logic problems
> here.
Um, I don't think that rock will be able to support all that mass... Even
the weakest sun for which I have numbers, an M8 star (2500K effective
temperature, so it glows a dull red), has ~0.2 times the mass of our Sun,
which means 0.2x2E30= 4x10^29 kg. The Earth, in comparison, has ~6x10^24 kg.
That's roughly 67 000 times *less* than the weakest sun. Even Jupiter,
which is 300 times Earth-mass, is still less than 0.5% as massive as a sun
barely hot enough to "burn" hydrogen. I'm afraid that you're planet is
either going to orbit its sun, doesn't have a sun, or else your planet *is* a
sun.
> First of all, for such a large planet, it would obviously have way to
> much gravity to support normal life, so I have it spinning much faster than
> normal planets to counteract the gravity. That would work right? Basically,
> I'm trying to set it up just right so that the environment on the planet
> would be pretty much the same as here on earth.
Try having a look at Hal Clement's _Mission of Gravity_ and see how Mesklin
is laid out. It's a failed supergiant planet, with a surface gravity of 300g
at the poles, spinning fast enough that the equator experiences only 3g. The
thing looks like a fried egg spinning in space, is so massive that its
atmosphere is mostly high-pressure hydrogen, and Mesklin still orbits its
sun.
--
-- Steve Patterson
http://www.wwdc.com/~spatterson/
email valid.sp...@wwdc.com, sans "v" word
Michael Grant
Hi. I haven't read everything that's happened in this thread, since
my newsfeed seems to have dried to a trickle; but having Dejanews to glance
ahead at The Sort Of Things That Are Being Mentioned, I can see one or
two possibilities missing, so forgive me if I end up repeating somebody else:
> Is it *possible* to have a Jupiter sized planet made of earth and rock
> though?
Not ordinarily. But I've just read "Anvil of Stars" by Greg Bear, and we
encounter "depleted gas giants" there -- gas giants that have lost their
outer layers of volatile elements due to having been mined. I'd guess that
a near supernova, or the meddling hands of ultrapowerful beings (you said
this planet was "created") might have a similar effect -- to take a
Jupiter-sized gas giant and convert it into a Uranus-sized rocky world. It
would still be greatly different to Earth -- immense gravity -- but if
you shrunk the inhabitants so they're only a few millimetres high, that
should stop them being permanently plastered to the floor. (But then you
run into the problems of Life At Low Reynolds Numbers. On Earth this means
water forms big, sticky globules, the air at your height is not turbulent, and
neither is water. I've no idea how this would work on a depleted gas giant
with a solid crust; I'd imagine it would all happen at lower scales still.)
Far better, IMO, to leave the world Earth-sized, and meddle with the sun
instead. Any body above 0.08 solar masses will collapse under its own weight
and undergo thermonuclear fusion (i.e. shine); anything beneath won't, and
will be a brown dwarf. But your ultrapowerful aliens can do some more
meddling, and cause a smaller body to collapse (like in "2010: Odyssey Two").
This can result in a moon-sized sun to be orbiting your Earth (like in the
Discworld books). But, as pointed out in "2063", the problem with this is
that your sun doesn't have much hydrogen, and goes out after a relatively
short period of time. Certainly not long enough for the 4 gigayears life took
to evolve on Earth to the stage where it could wonder What It All Means (TM).
Solving this problem is more difficult... and intrudes into the domain of
an idea I had a few months ago and really should get around to writing into
a short story myself. ;^)
Hope you found (the rest of) these remarks useful.
ttfn,
Mchl Grnt
(<groans><clutches stomach> I can feel a short short coming on...)
+-----------IN--MEMORIAM--PHOENICIS.CANTABRIGENSIS.ACADEMIAE.UK------------+
"The couch potatoes would couch ptato, the mountaineers would mountaineer,
I'd write long hubristic novels and you'd... probably find the whole thing
ideologically suspect somewhere." -- Emmet O'Brien on his ideal society
+------< M.S....@hw.ac.uk>------< http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~msgrant/ >----+
Rachael M. Lininger
On Mon, 19 Oct 1998 pa...@webnexus.com wrote:
>In article <Pine.GSO.4.02.98101...@virtu.sar.usf.edu>,
>"Rachael M. Lininger" <lini...@virtu.sar.usf.edu> wrote:
>
>> If there were such a think as ownership of ideas,
Eech. I guess I'm still getting used to my new keyboard.
>There are, known as "patents" and in a more limited sense,
>"trademarks". "Copyrights" of course only cover a specific
>expression of an idea into a fixed form (like print or a
>recording).
I thought about it, though, and I'm not sure it applies. Even patents
and trademarks require more than an "idea." You have to get something
on paper that could only be from you.
You can't trademark, for example, the idea of a wavy white line on a
red background, you trademark _this_ wavy white line on a red
background. And you don't patent an idea for a better mousetrap using
a freeze-ray; you patent this particular configuration of parts that
makes a freeze ray.
In this context, the idea for the geocentric universe would, by
analogy, have to be worked out in specific before the idea could be
protected, and it would only be the specifics that were protected.
Or am I totally wrong about this? I admittedly know very little about
trademarks and even less about patents.
Rachael
--
lini...@virtu.sar.usf.edu | "These are the bone words,
| the cracks on the under-shell.
No, I'm not working on my thesis. | This is the other grammar."
Why do you ask? | --Le Guin
Dorothy J Heydt
>In article <F124w...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
[Lagrange points]
>Minor nit, the second orbit above isn't in the same orbit as the
>secondary (at least, Eric's picture doesn't show it to be so
>
>L1 = between primary and secondary
>L2 = beyond secondary
>L3 = on other side of primary
Yeah, of the first three points I couldn't remember which was
which, and I thought I'd said so. It's irrelevant for Shinyhat's
problen, since none of them has enough stability.
Morgan E. Smith
always under the impression that the Silmarilion stuff was essentially
enormous quantities of Tolkien backstory, not intended for publication. I
can't remember how I got this idea, really, but the form seems to me to be
edited notes, and it did appear after J.R.R.'s death, so...
Had Tolkien lived, he might have used some of this to create more
novels, but I sincerely doubt it would have appeared in the form it did.
Morgan Smith
kens...@hotmail.com
"Shinyhat" <shin...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
[...]
> Now I'm intrigued by Leif Brown's proposition, of having the planet stuck
> between a supergiant star and a black hole, and I'm trying to work out a
> system like that. If I could get that to work, that would be much better
> even than my original plan, because having two suns, a dark sun and a light
> sun, offers interesting new plot possibilities.
Of course, black holes aren't actually black; they emit lots of radiation,
some of it, if I recall correctly, in the visible spectrum. This is caused
by the interception of virtual particle pairs by the Schwartzchild radius.
It's not as confusing as it may sound because you don't have to understand
the physics to know what the black hole would look like.
I think what Dorothy suggested, using a brown dwarf instead (it'd be faintly
visible in the "night" sky), would be a better idea, if you don't want to use
the idea suggested by me and others--namely to use an artificial sun that
rotates the planet.
John Kensmark
kens...@hotmail.com
Jo Walton
jhe...@shrike.depaul.edu "Jonathan W Hendry" writes:
> Is there an edition out that isn't tainted with the lame cover art?
The current British editions have Tolkien's own cover art. It might
be worth ordering them.
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Blood of Kings Poetry; rasfw FAQ;
Reviews; Interstichia; Momentum - a paying market for real poetry.
kens...@hotmail.com
"Shinyhat" <shin...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
>
> kens...@hotmail.com wrote in article <70fmnc$9am$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
> > In article <01bdfaf3$4ae41360$e126c8cc@n>,
> > "Shinyhat" <shin...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > LeifBrown <leif...@aol.com> wrote in article
> > > <19981018152959...@ngol01.aol.com>...
> > > >
[...]
> > A planet a little bigger than Jupiter is intensely unlikely to be
> > anything other than a gas giant. That probably doesn't suit your needs.
>
> Is it *possible* to have a Jupiter sized planet made of earth and rock
> though?
As far as I know...I don't know. If it's solid, that might be too much mass,
and the planet might collapse. I think Dorothy's husband addressed this in
one of her posts. If the planet *isn't* solid, but is hollow, as in _The
World is Round_ (right title?), or partly hollow / not very dense, as in
_Lord Valentine's Castle_, then it might be more plausible.
> > No. Even in the example given, the gravity doesn't change (directly)
> > because of the spin--it's just balanced, to varying extent, by the
> > centrifugal force from the spin. The reason the poles collapse in that
> > example is because they don't experience any significant centrifugal force,
> > so they bear the full brunt of the gravity.
>
> Right, so in a really large planet, creatures on it would *feel* alot more
> gravity at the poles right?
Probably, but it gets complicated.
> So say I had a planet roughly the size of...say...Uranus..maybe saturn. If
> its spinning fast enough to create livable gravity in most areas, then if
> someone went to the equator, they would weigh very little? And if they went
> to the poles, they'd probably be smashed?
Like I said, it's complicated.
The centrifugal force that'd counteract the gravity somewhat would be
strongest at the equator. As you moved toward the poles, it would gradually
get weaker, and you'd feel the gravity more strongly. But a planet like this
would deform from the force of the spin--it'd flatten out, as other folks
have already pointed out. The gravity at the edge would be enormous, but so
would the spin. There'd be very little spin near the poles, but the gravity
wouldn't be as high there as if the planet hadn't deformed.
Someone else (Dorothy, probably) already suggested Hal Clement's _Mission of
Gravity_, one of two novels (that I know of) that he placed on a carefully
worked out flattened planet like this. It's bizarre, and good reading.
> > > And could a planet actually exist in a shape other than a sphere?
> >
> > Yes, especially if you're open-minded about what a "planet" is or if
> > you're picky about what a "sphere" is. For example, as I said, the Earth
> > is not precisely a sphere. Moreover, non-spherical planet-like objects
> > have been the subject of many SF stories. Niven's Ringworld series, his
> > "Flare Time" (if I recall the name of the story accurately), and his essay
> > "Bigger than Worlds" are pretty accessible, for example.
And his _Integral Trees_ and related books. I'm probably forgetting others as
well.
> > My latest book, which I'd call science-fantasy, occurs in a
> > bigger-than-worlds setting that's scientifically plausible.
>
> Hm..interesting. So you could actually have, say, a disc shaped planet that
> rotates and functions normally?? So then...the world would be flat, right?
> You could walk off the edge of the world!
You wouldn't want to try it. If you walked to the edge and stepped over, you
wouldn't fall off--you'd get slammed into the edge itself, where the gravity
would be tremendous. My book, referred to above, takes place on a variation
of an "Alderson disk," which is a non-rotating disk-like world. Well, it's
actually more of a flattened torus, but....
Niven's "Bigger than Worlds", which I referred to above, is an excellent
primer on this subject. You can find it in _A Hole in Space_, a Niven
anthology from 1974 that's common in used bookstores, _The Endless Frontier_,
an anthology edited by Pournelle from 1979, and either _N Space_ or
_Playgrounds of the Mind_, I forget which, which are still in bookstores
right now. If you're considering any kind of artificial planet or large
habitat for a story, this short essay (which has illustrations, no less) is a
must-read.
Best of luck.
kens...@hotmail.com
clo...@erols.com wrote:
>
>
> Jonathan W Hendry wrote:
>
> > I've been thinking of picking up LOTR, since my old copies have long
> > since disappeared. Unfortunately, I'm utterly turned off by the latest
> > cover art, including that Buddy Hackett-esque hobbit on one of them.
> >
>
One *must* be able to find a copy of this stuff in used bookstores, no? Older
editions may have different art, of course.
> Brenda <always loathed the Hildebrandt art>
I like some of their stuff, but it doesn't suit all applications, of course.
I liked their Shanarra / LOTR -derived/inspired _Urshurak_ (with Nichols)
better than the actual Shanarra books.
kens...@hotmail.com
djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
[...]
> They wouldn't see the black hole directly. (I mean, it's a
> singularity from which nothing can escape, including light.)
In a couple of other posts in this thread, I mentioned that a black hole
should emit radiation, contrary to popular belief, through Schwartzchild
interception of virtual particle pairs. I also noted that I wasn't sure if
this idea was still considered valid.
I just went to look it up to make sure I wasn't imagining things, as sometimes
happens, and, lo and behold, instead I found *another* reason (again per
Hawking) why black holes should radiate: namely, quantum fluctuation of the
Schwartzchild radius.
I hate to pester, but since you apparently have an expert in your house,
Dorothy, could you ask about this? I'd been thinking I knew a little bit
about this, but they change the rules now and then, and I'd hate to be
disseminating little-known information that also happens to be out of date.
I could explain reasonably well either of the above reasons why a black hole
should radiate, but, of course, Hal would already know, and if this stuff is
indeed out of date then I don't want to confuse anyone else.
kens...@hotmail.com
rit...@cruzio.com wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Oct 1998 22:45:57 GMT, kens...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> >In article <908821...@bluejo.demon.co.uk>,
> > J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk wrote:
> >[...]
> >> The oddest thing like that though was on rasfw when for some reason
> >> we were discussing Christian heresies and somebody (maybe Nancy)
> >> wanted a new one, and I thought of one, and posted it in detail,
> >
> >I'm so sorry I missed that. I'm an heresiarch myself (that's what I tell
> >people when they ask what my religion is), and so I'm keenly interested in
> >other people's heresies. Well, next time 'round.
>
> I told my students that you can only correctly call a person a heretic
> if the person believes a variant of the same thing the
> heretic-defining folks believe. Like, I couldn't correctly be called a
> heretic, for example. Was I right?
I'd say so, sure. A heretic is someone who dissents from an accepted norm or
dogma. It generally has the connotation of someone who *was* a conformist or
believer but no longer is. You might not call a foreigner a heretic (he or
she would be more of a pagan, nu?), but a former believer is right on target.
An heresiarch, on the other hand, is someone who advocates or disseminates
heresies, heresies being ideas that are inconsistent with an established
dogma. Thus, it doesn't matter what the heresiarch does or doesn't believe;
what matter are the beliefs of his or her *audience*. Much more convenient.
Kate Nepveu
: In article <362bd...@news.depaul.edu>
: jhe...@shrike.depaul.edu "Jonathan W Hendry" writes:
:> Is there an edition out that isn't tainted with the lame cover art?
: The current British editions have Tolkien's own cover art. It might
: be worth ordering them.
They're beautiful. I wanted reading copies--I have the big red leather
edition which is lovely and impossible to cart around--and picked up the
British paperbacks when I was in London. Very nice indeed.
Kate
--
http://www.concentric.net/~knepveu/ - The Paired Reading Page; Reviews
"I asked if I could change, and now, twenty minutes later, the question
seems absurd. I am changing whether I wish to or not."
--Steven Brust, _Agyar_
atlas
star. It's stellar object is artificial or magicalã providing heat,
light, etc., while having less mass than the planet. That would allow it
to orbit.
I'm thinking of the end of _2010_.
atlas
Random
:No no no. The book is fantasy, but the people here are smart. Really
smart.
:They have all sorts of technology based on gravity and kinetics, as well
as
:steam, and they also have VERY advanced astronomical study tools. They're
:not cavemen, that's for sure, so the system has to be very rational
I say:
By kinetic, you probably mean more than levers and pulleys and all that,
right?
So you mention that Alna was the last planet to be created at that the
final battle of the universe will be fought on it. My suggestion would be
to let the Alnians in on the idea that they live in a fantasy universe with
fantasy rules. They could approach their rather wacky astronomy
scientficially, but within the fantasy mindset. After all, if they do
stand out as the one star-planet system that is acting at odds with the
rest of the universe, this would lead to the logical conclusion that some
intervening force is either adjusting the conditions or totally breaking
the rules. A few thousand years of philosophy and physics could lead to
the logical inference of your God-being or other direct evidence of Its
existence.
Also, if you are interested in using the Abrahamic God in your book, you'll
need to tackle a few testy issues about the creation of the universe (like,
why did it take time to do it, why would Alna be last), why He bothered to
make planets other than Alna, why good things happen to bad people and all
that. You can start by saying that we mere human readers have totally
misuderstood Yahweh and His designs and that would be fine as long as He
doesn't act like a college sophomore in the book and if there is a
reasonable eschatology in the book.
kens...@hotmail.com
Michael Grant <M.S....@hw.ac.uk> wrote:
[...]
> But your ultrapowerful aliens can do some more meddling, and cause a
> smaller body to collapse (like in "2010: Odyssey Two"). This can result
> in a moon-sized sun to be orbiting your Earth (like in the Discworld
> books). But, as pointed out in "2063", the problem with this is that
> your sun doesn't have much hydrogen, and goes out after a relatively short
> period of time. Certainly not long enough for the 4 gigayears life took
> to evolve on Earth to the stage where it could wonder What It All Means
> (TM).
I think it's worth pointing out that
(A) we don't know that the civilization on Shinyhat's world evolved there.
I rather had the impression that it didn't--that it'd either come there
from elsewhere in the relatively recent past (significantly less than 4
gigayears, anyway) or else that it'd been helped along or created there.
(B) we don't know how long it took on Earth for life to evolve to the point
of wondering, or even of making astronomical observations. We know more
or less how long it took *us* to get here, and we have pretty good reason
to believe that no technologically advanced civilization arose before
ours. But that doesn't mean there weren't, say, intelligent dinosaurs
that named constellations and wondered why they were put here--they just
don't seem to have built large cities, made plastics, etc.
(C) we don't, in any case, know how long it takes for something like us to
evolve. We only have one data point on that; it's not enough to
generalize from. Recent discoveries suggest that life appeared on Earth
several hundred years earlier than had previously been thought. Since
no one was much disputing before, in scientific terms, that we'd had
time enough to evolve into our present state, this "extra" time is
gratis, per our theories. If you can fudge the numbers that much
without having to change your theory any.... The bottom line is, we
don't know how long it takes for human-like life, or something
comparable, to evolve.
(D) if the aliens are hand-wavingly powerful enough to create an artificial
sun like this *anyway*, perhaps they have a better means of powering it,
too.
Dorothy J Heydt
atlas <at...@aloha.net> wrote:
>How's this-- your big planet is at the center of a system that lacks a true
>star. It's stellar object is artificial or magical-- providing heat,
>light, etc., while having less mass than the planet. That would allow it
>to orbit.
Same problem as before. If the radiant body is of low mass, then
"artificial or magical" is exactly what you'll need to make it
shine. There is no physical force known to Terrans at this time
(which is the functional equivalent of "there isn't any" for
science-fictional purposes) that you could use to get a radiant
body of low mass that will provide enough light and heat to
support life.
So you're left with either
(a) Just calling it "magic" and the hell with it. This makes
the work fantasy, which apparently Isaac/Shinyhat doesn't want.
or
(b) A hand-waving, fast-talking invocation of "some unknown
physical force as yet undiscovered by mere humans," in other
words, magic by Clarke's Third Law. This doesn't make it science
fiction. This makes it National Enquirer stuff.
The way you can get out of *that* with a reasonably whole skin is
to say, "Somebody built this system this way, with an artificial
sun, and we don't know how it works but there it is, AND THIS IS
WHAT HAPPENED IN THIS SETTING," which I think is going to be the
interesting part of this story.
But the "Somebody" mentioned above can't be God. When God
interferes with the natural behaviors (which we somewhat
inaccurately call "laws") of the universe, then it's a miracle.
Most people nowadays don't believe in miracles. If you make a
miracle the central enabling fact of your story, they won't
accept it as science fiction.
(Look at all the flames that come up every time somebody mentions
C. S. Lewis, and he doesn't even have any miracles happening on
camera, he merely assumes that Christianity is true and goes from
there.)
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
_A Point of Honor_ is out....
pa...@webnexus.com
wrote:
> Yeah, of the first three points I couldn't remember which was
> which, and I thought I'd said so.
You did. The nit was about the location of the L3 point
(the one on the opposite side of the primary from the secondary).
It's just that I had the diagram in front of me so I put
in the correspondences.
Sam Paik
papag...@my-dejanews.com
Jonathan W Hendry <jhe...@shrike.depaul.edu> wrote:
>
> I've been thinking of picking up LOTR, since my old copies have long
> since disappeared. Unfortunately, I'm utterly turned off by the latest
> cover art, including that Buddy Hackett-esque hobbit on one of them.
>
>
No kidding-- it's the worst. I REALLY hate the horrible "artist's conception"
of Strider/Aragorn on the cover of The Return of the King. He doesn't look
regal in the least, more like some paunchy middle manager. Unfortunately it's
the edition I picked up at some point... I'm going to get myself a better
looking one and give this one away.
There was an edition published in the early 80's that had gorgeous ethereal-
looking landscapes for covers.
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum
papag...@my-dejanews.com
>
> I've been thinking of picking up LOTR, since my old copies have long
> since disappeared. Unfortunately, I'm utterly turned off by the latest
> cover art, including that Buddy Hackett-esque hobbit on one of them.
>
> Is there an edition out that isn't tainted with the lame cover art?
>
No kidding-- it's the worst. I especially despise the artist's conception of
Strider/Aragorn on the cover of _The Return of the King_. He doesn't look
regal in the least: more like some paunchy middle-manager type. This guy is
supposed to inspire all right-thinking Middle-Earthers? Please!
There was an edition from the early 80's that had gorgeous ethereal watercolor
landscape scenes. Unfortunately, I'm stuck with the ugly edition (at least
until I go down to my used bookstore!).
Michael S. Schiffer
Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>(Look at all the flames that come up every time somebody mentions
>C. S. Lewis, and he doesn't even have any miracles happening on
>camera, he merely assumes that Christianity is true and goes from
>there.)
You don't consider being carried to the planet Venus by angels
to be a miracle?
Mike
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS "I decline utterly to be impartial
ms...@tezcat.com as between the fire brigade and
ms...@midway.uchicago.edu the fire."
-- Winston Churchill, July 7, 1926
John F. Eldredge
That is my impression as well. I also seem to remember reading that
Tolkien created the various languages before he started on the plots.
--
John F. Eldredge -- eldr...@poboxes.com
PGP key available from http://www.netforward.com/poboxes/?eldredge/
--
"There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power;
not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace." - Woodrow Wilson
Dorothy J Heydt
In article <70imdh$3ml$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <kens...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>In article <F13wD...@kithrup.com>,
>> They wouldn't see the black hole directly. (I mean, it's a
>> singularity from which nothing can escape, including light.)
>
>In a couple of other posts in this thread, I mentioned that a black hole
>should emit radiation, contrary to popular belief, through Schwartzchild
>interception of virtual particle pairs. I also noted that I wasn't sure if
>this idea was still considered valid.
I haven't heard of anything that would disprove Hawking's work.
(Mind you, I'm an old used engineer, but I try to keep up on some
of the more interesting aspects of the physical sciences.)
>I just went to look it up to make sure I wasn't imagining things, as sometimes
>happens, and, lo and behold, instead I found *another* reason (again per
>Hawking) why black holes should radiate: namely, quantum fluctuation of the
>Schwartzchild radius.
I hadn't heard about this, but it's probably a piece with his
earlier work on the 'evaporation' of black holes by capturing one
half of pair of virtual particles.
>I hate to pester, but since you apparently have an expert in your house,
>Dorothy, could you ask about this? I'd been thinking I knew a little bit
>about this, but they change the rules now and then, and I'd hate to be
>disseminating little-known information that also happens to be out of date.
I don't think the rules changed, so much as they got refined.
One can see how the minor fluctuation in the Schwartschild radius
ties in rather neatly with the virtual particle captures.
>I could explain reasonably well either of the above reasons why a black hole
>should radiate, but, of course, Hal would already know, and if this stuff is
>indeed out of date then I don't want to confuse anyone else.
Unless the black hole is pretty small (as black holes go), this
ought to be a pretty minor component. It's the accretion disk
emissions that'll really be noticible. If I recall correctly,
it's surmised that something like 10% of the mass of the acretion
disk comes off as radiation and quite a bit of that is going to
be pretty energetic. Even if all the thing is 'eating' is the
local solar wind (as opposed to 'spilling' large amounts of
matter from a companion star in the accretion disk), it's still
going to *look* pretty spectacular.
There is one other problem in the basic setup as it now appears.
With a black hole of significant mass and what everyone seems to
want--a blue giant--orbiting each other, in order to have
reasonable condition on a planet between them, the orbital period
of the star and the black hole will have to be pretty long--say
on the order of tens of years. (For those watching this debate
from the sidelines, the problem is that the amount of energy put
out by a star is *not* a linear function of mass. Stars even
moderately more massive that the Sun put out many times as much
energy. This is why we keep pointing out that a massive star
doesn't stay on the main sequence--stable hydrogen fusion
burning--very long. It's gots *lots* more fuel but it 'burns' it
at massive rates.)
--Hal Heydt
Julian Flood
> No, gravity is not cancelled by centrifugal force.
I am tempted to write 'clear, concise and wrong' but I wonder what your
reasoning is. Is it a matter of definitions?
--
Julian Flood
jul...@argonet.co.uk
Life: much too important to be taken seriously.
Manny Olds
) This ignores problems of solar system formation, but
) that's easily fixable, merely have advanced aliens
) (or the inhabitants in an earlier technical era) go
) clean out the other planets & other orbital garbage.
There's a story--why did they clean it up? What did they do with the
matter? Will our guys be ticked off when they discover that they had their
solar system stolen?
Of course, as soon as someone says something like "just put in a
technobabble artificial star, but you have to get the fusion mass from
somewhere", I start thinking about what is going in the place they are
draining the hydrogen *from*.
And if someone starts quoting sentences about orange horses and sleeping
onions and ivory teacups, I start to wonder about what it would be like if
you suddenly started overhearing sentences like that everywhere you went.
And of course, anyone who really *wants* to steal these ideas may do so
with my blessing, any sympathy.
Manny Olds <old...@clark.net> of Riverdale Park, Maryland, USA
"I'm getting dizzy here -- you've given him permission to steal, but if
he has permission, he can't steal, so he could steal until he asked
'can I steal', but you said "yes" and now he can't . . ." -- Joy Beeson
Brian A. Williamson
>In my book, the solar system is set up very differently. I have the main
>planet, Alna, as an extremely large planet, so large that it is the center
>of the solar system, and all the other planets, including the sun, revolve
>around it. Now I'm trying to see if there are any major logic problems
>here.
Big problem. For Alna to be the center of the system, it has to have a lot
more mass than the other bodies. You figured this much out yourself ("...so
large that it is the center..."). However, mass is *also* the reason why
stars shine. A "planet" with enough mass becomes a star. That's the only
difference between stars and planets really--they both start out as
conglomerations of stuff, but stars collapse under their own weight and
initiate fusion. So if Alna is big enough to be the center of a solar
system, it is also big enough to become a star.
So, if this is to work at all, you have to figure out why Alna isn't a star.
Good luck.
Mr. K
Shinyhat wrote:
> Suppose the planet was sortof "stuck" in the center of the universe between
> a star and a black hole. Now wait...that wouldnt be possible, because the
> star and black hole would be drawn by each other and collide, right?
Not necessarily. There could be a stable orbit achieved around the center
ofmass of the black hole / star system.
Now, I am interested in knowing exactly how the planet will survive. Shouldn't
it move along the geodesics of space-time curvature and get ripped apart over
time? Tidal forces would tear it apart.
Let's not waste time on stellar graveyards. If you follow the balance of
electron
degeneracy motion and gravity, you will arrive at black holes, white dwarfs,
neutron stars, etc. Suffice it to say, life as we know it cannot survive on a
star
(alive, dying, or dead). And I can't really perceive intelligent life evolving
on gas
giants.
Perhaps on the moon of a gas giant (a moon with an atmosphere like Titan)...
Our extrasolar research has yielded, I believe, ten or twelve gas giants the
size
of Jupiter or larger revolving around distant stars. Our technique of detection
prevents us from seeing planets smaller than this. Maybe you can write about
a planet like Earth in a distant solar system?
Although I cannot think of a good suggestion for you, I would encourage you to
pursue your scientific inquiry. Why? Quite simply put, excellent science
fiction is
the product of solid research into what mankind knows. It incorporates this
knowledge and proceeds into the realm of the unknown in a logical manner.
One final point. I believe you should consult with a physicist (preferrably
astro-
physicist). But to make him/her take you seriously, read up on your astronomy
first. Might I recommend "Black Holes and Time Warps" by Kip Thorne? It is
an excellent book written for non-physicists.
- Mr. K
--
"Aye-to wonder what purpose there is
to one's existence and what point there
is to purpose, even if it should be
discovered."
- The Elric Saga, Michael Moorcock
kens...@hotmail.com
Thanks a million. This is precisely the kind of thing where looking it up
oneself takes so much longer than asking someone who likely already knows....
> In article <70imdh$3ml$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <kens...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >In article <F13wD...@kithrup.com>,
> >> They wouldn't see the black hole directly. (I mean, it's a
> >> singularity from which nothing can escape, including light.)
> >
> >In a couple of other posts in this thread, I mentioned that a black hole
> >should emit radiation, contrary to popular belief, through Schwartzchild
> >interception of virtual particle pairs. I also noted that I wasn't sure if
> >this idea was still considered valid.
>
> >[...] lo and behold, instead I found *another* reason (again per
> >Hawking) why black holes should radiate: namely, quantum fluctuation of the
> >Schwartzchild radius.
>
> I hadn't heard about this, but it's probably a piece with his
> earlier work on the 'evaporation' of black holes by capturing one
> half of pair of virtual particles.
>
[...]
> I don't think the rules changed, so much as they got refined.
> One can see how the minor fluctuation in the Schwartschild radius
> ties in rather neatly with the virtual particle captures.
Great. It's always nice to find some kind of confirmation that one *does*
understand these things a bit. My projects tend to lean toward SF more than
fantasy, and I *hate* to fudge stuff if there's a workaround, so I have a
couple of consultants for this kind of thing (but asking here, in this case,
seemed easier). It usually turns out that I'm not way off, but every once in
a while....
> Unless the black hole is pretty small (as black holes go), this
> ought to be a pretty minor component. It's the accretion disk
> emissions that'll really be noticible.
Right. I was mostly concerned in general terms, and if the black hole was
somewhere by itself, in the middle of a reasonable void and not in a binary
with a 'normal' star, for example, I was curious if it'd truly be 'black.'
Thanks again.
John Kensmark
kens...@hotmail.com
Dan Krashin
<two...@mc64.merton.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> Shinyhat <shin...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
> : In my book, the solar system is set up very differently. I have the main
> : planet, Alna, as an extremely large planet, so large that it is the center
> : of the solar system, and all the other planets, including the sun, revolve
> : around it.
>
>
> Do you have to have the main planet being enormously large?
>
> If not, why not have a central planet of perhaps twice Earth's mass -
> I suspect there's some nasty solid-state physics going on in the cores
> and radius does not scale as cube root of mass, so you can't get a
> rocky planet much bigger than Earth - and have a series of fairly
> low-mass asteroids put into orbit around it, one of which has an Acme
> ZPE Generator on it to produce enough light to dimly illuminate the
> central planet.
>
> Say 1W per square meter on the planet's surface, and r=10000km - the
> generator would be of the order of 10^14 watts, which is only five
> orders of magnitude larger than the biggest powerstation ever built.
>
> Your natives are going to be squat creatures with enormous eyes,
> unless they 'see' by some other technique altogether, since you can't
> justify getting ridiculous energies from the Acme Generator.
You just need to upgrade to the Acme Ridiculous Energy generator.
Yes, it's a bit more expensive...
How about having the "geocentric planet" be the outside of a (smallish) Dyson
sphere? You could then have some kind of ship with a fusion drive orbiting
the sphere, pushing against centripetal force and looking very much like a
small Sun. (What the fusion drive uses for fuel all this time will be left
to the next poster to answer).
--
Dan Krashin
"When Nikto are Klaatu, only Klaatu will Barata Nikto."
Matthew F Johnson
"Shinyhat" (shin...@rocketmail.com) writes:
> pa...@webnexus.com wrote in article <70f1fl$d9r$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>> It occurs to me that all you really need is a way for the
>> people on the planet to justify saying the star revolves
>> around the planet. Well, you don't actually need to do
>> very much, just make that one planet be the only planet
>> in the system. Then there would not be any niggling
>> points of light in the sky which reverse directions
>> during the year. A model that had the star orbiting
>> the planet would be as simple and just as accurate as
>> a model that had the planet orbiting the star.
>
> No no no. The book is fantasy, but the people here are smart. Really smart.
> They have all sorts of technology based on gravity and kinetics, as well as
> steam, and they also have VERY advanced astronomical study tools. They're
In that case I'd recommend you study pre-Copernican physics. You
can get a fair way with physics in a Ptolemaic world, and any book that
tells you where that system fell apart can also give you hints on how a
truly P. world would work differently (cannonballs would go straight up
then down instead of curving, for instance).
--
Matthew F. Johnson
Oh, put another nickel in, in the Necronomicon
All I want is lovin' you and evil, evil, evil
Matthew F Johnson
"Shinyhat" (shin...@rocketmail.com) writes:
> kens...@hotmail.com wrote in article <70fmnc$9am$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>>
>>
>>
>> Yes, especially if you're open-minded about what a "planet" is or if
> you're
>> picky about what a "sphere" is. For example, as I said, the Earth is not
>> precisely a sphere. Moreover, non-spherical planet-like objects have
> been
>> the subject of many SF stories. Niven's Ringworld series, his "Flare
> Time"
>> (if I recall the name of the story accurately), and his essay "Bigger
> than
> call
>> science-fantasy, occurs in a bigger-than-worlds setting that's
> scientifically
>> plausible.
>
> Hm..interesting. So you could actually have, say, a disc shaped planet that
> rotates and functions normally?? So then...the world would be flat, right?
> You could walk off the edge of the world!
Yes and no. The world would look flat from a 2D perspective, but
you wouldn't be able to fall off it - you'd go over to the other side,
just like on a sphere. Gravity would vary a lot more from place to place
than on a sphere, though - I leave it to one of the physisicits present to
figure out how much - so it's possible escape velocity would be very low
at the outer edge.
Matthew F Johnson
Dorothy J Heydt (djh...@kithrup.com) writes:
> In article <01bdfba7$569111e0$f126c8cc@n>,
> Shinyhat <shin...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> a geocentric universe....
>>
>>Several reasons. One, is it just adds an interesting twist to the workings
>>of the world, such as judging years by rotations of the sun, etc.
>
> But that's going to have no functional difference from judging
> years on Earth.
>
> (In the opening segment of _The Day the Universe Changed,_ James
> Burke quotes a conversation between a naive student and the
> philosopher Wittgenstein. Student: "How foolish our ancestors were
> to think the sun revolved around the earth!" Wittgenstein: "Yes,
> but consider: if the sun did revolve around the earth, what would
> it have looked like?" The answer is, of course, that it would
> look exactly the same to the not-very-observant eye.)
Hey, I was going to quote that!
And I think it's reasonable to say they would look just the same to
quite observant eyes that had no reason to worry about the question. As
Burke says in the same book, medieval people were not stupid - they were
very well adapted to the world they lived in, one in which (in this case)
whether the earth spun around the sun or vice versa was basically
irrelevant. It was only when it became relevant to _their_ needs - eg
theology - that it became an issue.
>
>>The
>>others are very practical. During the story, an extremely catastrophic
>>event is going to happen that disrupts all the planetary cycles including
>>the sun's, totally rearranging the way everything works.
>
> Do you want anybody to survive to tell the tale? Then these
> catastrophes had better not be quite as catastrophic as that.
>
> I can think of one you can use for an exceedingly Earthlike
> planet--one that will happen to Earth someday. Give the planet a
> large moon--really, a small companion planet--like ours. Ours,
> having once been much closer in, has been drifting steadily
> outward for a long time. (This has provided some interesting
> effects in tidal stresses and day lengths.) Eventually it'll
> reach the end of its gravitational tether and start drifting back
> inward. When it gets close enough it will reach Roche's limit
> and break up into a ring like Saturn's. But before that happens,
> the tidal stresses on *Earth* will be sufficient to tear large
> chunks out of the crust and send them hurtling upward. Mostly in
> the high latitudes. Mind you, this is a *very*long* time in our
> future. But you could juggle some numbers to make it happen
> sooner to your planet.
>
> Also, the world in
>>question is an extremely important world, the last world that will ever be
>>created, and the stage for the conflict that ends it all,
>
> I see, this is where the fantasy kicks in. Okay. But *any*
> world is going to be very, very important to the people living on
> it, so you don't strictly need for it to be of such cosmic
> significance to the rest of created things. Unless you want to,
> which apparently you do.
>
>>so it wouldn't do
>>to have it just another rock flying around with all the rest.
>
> See above. If this is *our* planet under the knife, then it
> doesn't matter to us how many other planets there are out there
> somewhere. Particularly if we can't escape to them.
>
> How large a universe are you working with? Is it just that one
> stellar system?
>
>>Now I'm intrigued by Leif Brown's proposition, of having the planet stuck
>>between a supergiant star and a black hole, and I'm trying to work out a
>>system like that. If I could get that to work, that would be much better
>>even than my original plan, because having two suns, a dark sun and a light
>>sun, offers interesting new plot possibilities.
>
> Yes, so far as that goes. You may wish to have a red dwarf
> rather than a black hole, though, because black hole/star binaries
> are of very short lifespans and would probably not be hospitable to
> life.
>
> Hal gave me a long description of how a system of that kind forms
> while we were driving up to get the cat out of the vet's; but
> now I've forgotten the details. I'll see if I can get him to
> repeat it when he gets home. In the meantime, trust me that any
> life on a planet between those two stars would get fried when the
> first star went off-sequence.
>
> Maybe you could have instead a main-sequence star and a brown
> dwarf which would radiate only faintly--if your people can see
> into the infrared, they could see it when the real sun was not in
> the sky, and might call it a "dark sun."
>
> Dorothy J. Heydt
> Albany, California
> djh...@kithrup.com
> http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
> _A Point of Honor_ is out....
Matthew F Johnson
probably never even get there.
Matthew F Johnson
John F. Eldredge (eldr...@poboxes.com) writes:
> "Morgan E. Smith" <mes...@calcna.ab.ca> wrote:
>
>> John D. Owen's post re: Tolkien made me stop and say "Huh?". I was
>>always under the impression that the Silmarilion stuff was essentially
>>enormous quantities of Tolkien backstory, not intended for publication. I
>>can't remember how I got this idea, really, but the form seems to me to be
>>edited notes, and it did appear after J.R.R.'s death, so...
>> Had Tolkien lived, he might have used some of this to create more
>>novels, but I sincerely doubt it would have appeared in the form it did.
>
> That is my impression as well. I also seem to remember reading that
> Tolkien created the various languages before he started on the plots.
All of this is Yes And No. He actually did submit _The
Silmarillion_, in something like its present form, to Unwin & Allen as a
possible follow-up to _The Hobbit_ (they turned it down). He later said
that this was a good thing, as it really wasn't fit for publication, some
of it unedited material going back to 1917.
As for the language/story thing, it's complicated; his first
Middle-Earth story was a prototype of the story of Turin Turimbar, which
he based partially on one of the central stories in the Kalevala, which he
encountered while learning Finnish... but the invention of the
(specifically Elvish) languages took place later. He had, of course, done
some language-inventing by that point, and much of the mythos did come
after he had created Quenya and Sindarin (though they, like the myths,
were constantly revised over the years).
Lance Purple
> How about having the "geocentric planet" be the outside of a (smallish)
> Dyson sphere? You could then have some kind of ship with a fusion drive
> orbiting the sphere [...]
If the "planet" Alna is a Dyson Sphere, just have it enclose one of
two binary M-class stars. Make sure the surface isn't rotating WRT
the rest of the galaxy, and you've got your geocentric planet.
.----------------------------.
| lpurple at netcom dot com |
'----------------------------'
Michael Grant
A long time ago, on a Usenet far, far away, Mr. K scribed:
^
> Our extrasolar research has yielded, I believe, ten or twelve gas
> giants the size of Jupiter or larger revolving around distant
> stars. Our technique of detection prevents us from seeing planets
> smaller than this.
Hmmm, to what are due the limitations of our dectection technique?
I've just had an Idea...
------------IN--MEMORIAM--PHOENICIS.CANTABRIGENSIS.ACADEMIAE.UK---------------
Don't look behind you; the lemmings are catching up.=8-0| Risus Sardonicus :-]
Remember the paper is always strongest at the | (Michael S. Grant)
perforations. | M.S....@hw.ac.uk
-------------------< http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~msgrant/ >----------------------
Graydon
Shinyhat <shin...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
>It doesnt "have" to be that large though. What if it was say, a little
>bigger than Jupiter, and the star orbiting it is small, like just small
>enough to be able to orbit the planet, but large enough and at the right
>distance to provide light for the whole side of the planet.
Stars have size limits; any smaller, and they don't work, any bigger,
and they don't last long enough for the planets to finish cooling.
If you want to do some serious, look-at-that-_blur_ handwaving, you
can have a rocky planet with several terrestrial masses, generally
lighter elments (so iron is rarer, the crust is thicker, erosion more
pronounced, compasses don't work so well, and mountains are lower) to
get a larger planertary sphere, and a 'sun' that's a white hole,
decaying superstring end, or similar; a slowly decaying mass of
antimatter would be cool, but you can't get enough to support the
necessary time frame for the evolution of life, I don't think. (Not
unless it's big and _close_, at which point it's going to make a hash
out of planetary formation anyway.)
--
"But how powerful, how stimulating to the very faculty which produced
it, was the invention of the adjective: no spell or incantation in
Faerie is more potent." -- "On Fairy-Stories", J.R.R. Tolkien
Graydon
Mick <d983...@mail.connect.usq.edu.au> wrote:
>On Sun, 18 Oct 1998 17:54:30 -0400, "Rachael M. Lininger"
><lini...@virtu.sar.usf.edu> wrote:
><big snip>
>>How rude.
>>
> Ha! That's a laughable comment coming from you, Racheal. But then
>again you've never been known for your patience with others....
It is no virtue to suffer fools.
Mr. K
Michael Grant wrote:
> bl
> A long time ago, on a Usenet far, far away, Mr. K scribed:
> ^
> > Our extrasolar research has yielded, I believe, ten or twelve gas
> > giants the size of Jupiter or larger revolving around distant
> > stars. Our technique of detection prevents us from seeing planets
> > smaller than this.
>
> Hmmm, to what are due the limitations of our dectection technique?
I think astronomers are alerted to the possibility of a planet existing based
on the gravitational effect the planet has on its star. I believe Earth and other
Earth-size planets cannot produce the required "wobble" in their star's motion...
to gain our attention.
That is why most of the planets we have found are the size of Jupiter or larger
and are much closer to their suns.
The answer to your question of course is that technology is the limitation to
our detection technique. That's all I know. Hope that helps.
Zeborah
>
> bl
> A long time ago, on a Usenet far, far away, Mr. K scribed:
> ^
> > Our extrasolar research has yielded, I believe, ten or twelve gas
> > giants the size of Jupiter or larger revolving around distant
> > stars. Our technique of detection prevents us from seeing planets
> > smaller than this.
>
> Hmmm, to what are due the limitations of our dectection technique?
IIRC, the previous limitations were a) the star's so bright it outshines any
planets that might be there, and b) trying to measure movement fluctuations in
the star that might be due to planets is downright impractical from Earth.
Now we've got the Hubble telescope, b) is solved to some extent. I'm not sure
about a), though. In any case, it'd still be pretty hard to notice the kinds
of fluctuations that an Earth-sized planet would cause, hence only gas giants
have been found.
Zeborah (last did physics in form five and can't remember if it included
astronomy or not)
kens...@hotmail.com
gra...@gooroos.com (Graydon) wrote:
> In article <362a9db4...@news.usq.edu.au>,
> Mick <d983...@mail.connect.usq.edu.au> wrote:
> >On Sun, 18 Oct 1998 17:54:30 -0400, "Rachael M. Lininger"
> ><lini...@virtu.sar.usf.edu> wrote:
> ><big snip>
> >>How rude.
> >>
> > Ha! That's a laughable comment coming from you, Racheal. But then
> >again you've never been known for your patience with others....
>
> It is no virtue to suffer fools.
Maybe, maybe not, but my experience has pretty consistently led me to believe
that the kinds of people who say that sort of thing (present company certainly
excepted, no irony intended) tend to be more foolish, themselves, than they
would ever imagine.
It's rather like justice. Some people want revenge; no one really wants
justice; everyone wants mercy for themselves and those they love. Maybe it's
wise to suffer fools a little. You know, give slack to get slack.
John Kensmark
kens...@hotmail.com
Tom Hise
(Michael Grant) wrote:
>
>Hmmm, to what are due the limitations of our dectection technique?
>I've just had an Idea...
>
I believe the technique being used so successfully lately is to measure the
Doppler shift in the spectrum of the star in question. A large planet will
cause the star to move first towards and then away from us. This will show
up as shift in the wavelength of its spectrum. The limitations are that
the rotation of the earth, its movement around the sun and the suns motion
all produce similar effects and must be corrected for. Since we don't know
these things _exactly_, errors are introduced that limit the sensitivity of
the final measurement.
Probably more than you really wanted to know.
--Tom
---------------------------------------------------------------
Language isn't a mathematical system of notation. This causes
confusion, which we generally try to clear up with more language.
-- Patrick Nielsen Hayden
---------------------------------------------------------------
To reply via e-mail remove the x from my address in the header.
Mr. K
Graydon wrote:
> If you want to do some serious, look-at-that-_blur_ handwaving, you
> can have a rocky planet with several terrestrial masses, generally
> lighter elments (so iron is rarer, the crust is thicker, erosion more
> pronounced, compasses don't work so well, and mountains are lower) to
> get a larger planertary sphere, and a 'sun' that's a white hole,
> decaying superstring end, or similar; a slowly decaying mass of
> antimatter would be cool, but you can't get enough to support the
> necessary time frame for the evolution of life, I don't think. (Not
> unless it's big and _close_, at which point it's going to make a hash
> out of planetary formation anyway.)
Mr. Graydon, sir,
Your message seems to suggest that 'white holes' do in fact exist. Although
white holes are the time reverse of black holes (on a mathematical level),
I thought we were uncertain of their physical existence (since they are
unstable and quite inexplicable -- unlike black holes).
It is possible that the big bang was a white hole.
Or did you mean 'white dwarf'?
Mr. K
Zeborah wrote:
> I quite like the idea that the universe could be a black hole... And my other
> favourite idea... When I first read of the idea of a white hole, ISTR the
> author (that guy, you know, who writes books, what's-his-name) said that
> because everything in a white hole would have no information about its form,
> it'd mostly come out as energy, some as hydrogen, but there was the slightest
> possibility that something more complex would come out, like an atom of gold
> or a car. I tried, several years ago, to write a story about this (except the
> car was a spaceship complete with crew), but the suspension of disbelief just
> never got turned on.
>
> Zeborah
Sounds interesting. I mentioned a book by Kip Thorne in one of my other postscalled
"Black Holes and Time Warps"... The prologue is actually a science fiction
story all about investigating black holes. The funny thing is that the story seems to
push the "loneliness" aspect (the idea of being all alone far away from humanity),
and I have a feeling it's purely unintentional. The only other novel that made me
feel that way was Rendezvous with Rama by Clarke.
I believe that one can write good science fiction without having to turn to extremes,
though. Read "Hide and Seek" (short story) by Clarke or the third section of
The Gods Themselves by Asimov. The former deals with Deimos and latter with
the moon.
Hmm... I'd really like to see a sci-fi novel about Io or Titan. Now, if we started a
new thread in which we asked everyone the following question:
If you had to spend a year in exile on a planet or moon in our solar system (without
any distraction -- like novels), which would it be? And assume that your hypothetical
space suit would allow you to explore any part of that planet without coming to harm.
Further assume that you have devices which allow you to penetrate the crust (for those
who want to explore the depths of Europa).
I'd of course choose Io or Titan. My favorite places to be! Sorry for the distraction.
Zeborah
>
> Mr. Graydon, sir,
>
> Your message seems to suggest that 'white holes' do in fact exist. Although
> white holes are the time reverse of black holes (on a mathematical level),
> I thought we were uncertain of their physical existence (since they are
> unstable and quite inexplicable -- unlike black holes).
It's not so long ago we were uncertain of their physical existence of black
holes. That didn't stop people writing books with them anyway. (Did the
Heechee books come before or after they found the first black hole? I know
they've only recently decided there's definitely one in the centre of our galaxy.)
One theoretical problem I read was that the energy/matter coming out of the
white hole would collide with energy/matter from surrounding space/stars etc
and form a black hole around the white hole before it even got started. I
never quite understood that (since it doesn't seem there'd be enough
energy/matter outside to start with), so I'm probably not explaining it very well.
> It is possible that the big bang was a white hole.
I quite like the idea that the universe could be a black hole... And my other
Graydon
>In article <70o61l$dkf$1...@excalibur.gooroos.com>,
> gra...@gooroos.com (Graydon) wrote:
>> It is no virtue to suffer fools.
>
>Maybe, maybe not, but my experience has pretty consistently led me to believe
>that the kinds of people who say that sort of thing (present company certainly
>excepted, no irony intended) tend to be more foolish, themselves, than they
>would ever imagine.
It can, like many another true saying, be used fatuously.
Sure. So?
There's this creeping tendency to use theological standards of
certainty -- utter, complete, established as the universe was itself
established, or at least Laws-of-the-Medes-and-Persians-graven-in
-stone -- to judge human interactions, which are inescapably unable to
stand up to that sort of scrutiny.
One then gets to say that nothing definate can be said, becuase no
absolute is available.
I think this is actively destructive.
Concious malice, concious folly -- someone doing as they desire
without regard for the consquences thereof -- concious refusal to
stand and deliver, these are things I hold it better not to suffer.
>It's rather like justice. Some people want revenge; no one really wants
>justice; everyone wants mercy for themselves and those they love. Maybe it's
>wise to suffer fools a little. You know, give slack to get slack.
If I'd encountered any in the first twenty years of my life, I would
very likely be a different person.
As it is, well, I much prefer honesty to the absence of pain, I think
mercy is a nonsensical concept, and I have sincerely regreted the
social unacceptability of tripping certain sorts of fools down the
stairs more than once before now.
You know that line about it not taking all kinds, we've just _got_ all
kinds?
It's not a statement about relative worth.
Graydon
Mr. K <gt5...@prism.gatech.edu> wrote:
>Graydon wrote:
>> If you want to do some serious, look-at-that-_blur_ handwaving, you
>> can have a rocky planet with several terrestrial masses, generally
>> lighter elments (so iron is rarer, the crust is thicker, erosion more
>> pronounced, compasses don't work so well, and mountains are lower) to
>> get a larger planertary sphere, and a 'sun' that's a white hole,
>> decaying superstring end, or similar; a slowly decaying mass of
>> antimatter would be cool, but you can't get enough to support the
>> necessary time frame for the evolution of life, I don't think. (Not
>> unless it's big and _close_, at which point it's going to make a hash
>> out of planetary formation anyway.)
>
>Mr. Graydon, sir,
It chances that 'Graydon' is my given name.
>Your message seems to suggest that 'white holes' do in fact exist. Although
None observed, so far as I know, but the scenario given is
preposterous; putting all the preposterity in a single location has
historically been held to be sensible under similar circumstances.
>Or did you mean 'white dwarf'?
Nope. Because white dwarfs are _big_.
kens...@hotmail.com
gra...@gooroos.com (Graydon) wrote:
> In article <70q7mo$i3k$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <kens...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >In article <70o61l$dkf$1...@excalibur.gooroos.com>,
> > gra...@gooroos.com (Graydon) wrote:
> >> It is no virtue to suffer fools.
> >
> >Maybe, maybe not, but my experience has pretty consistently led me to believe
> >that the kinds of people who say that sort of thing (present company
> >certainly excepted, no irony intended) tend to be more foolish, themselves,
> >than they would ever imagine.
>
> It can, like many another true saying, be used fatuously.
>
> Sure. So?
My point, as directly stated, was that my experience has led me to believe
that this particular saying is used fatuously, or perhaps more to the point
hypocritically, rather more often than others. Hypocrisy is not something I
necessarily hold as a high crime, but in this particular case I find it
ironic in a way that makes me tend to think a lot less of the person in
question.
> There's this creeping tendency to use theological standards of
> certainty -- utter, complete, established as the universe was itself
> established, or at least Laws-of-the-Medes-and-Persians-graven-in
> -stone -- to judge human interactions, which are inescapably unable to
> stand up to that sort of scrutiny.
I don't think it's so much "creeping" as "pretty well-established," at least
in the US. I don't think it's too mysterious, either, although I *do* think
it's awfully unfortunate.
> One then gets to say that nothing definate can be said, becuase no
> absolute is available.
I think this is a feedback loop. In the US, for example, there is a cultural
crisis where many people see absolute standards that were revered in the past
falling away. They are unsure what to believe in; the problems at hand are
vague, complex, and difficult.
One result is that they chum up the water with relative minutiae--they pick
some side issue and take an absolutist stance. This way they can feel they
have at least *some* moral high ground, some unassailable position;
*something*, after all, must be black and white, or else hoi polloi become
uneasy, no?
Another result is the villainization of hypocrisy. After all, if there are
no absolute standards, then what can we hold people accountable for? Well,
of course, if they say one thing but do another--ha! Now they've been caught
in a trap, and it's easy to paint them guilty. Nevermind that sometimes
things are more complex, or that people in positions of authority frequently
have hypocrisy as a necessary part of the job. It's not worth investigating
closely, because that might reveal gray areas, doubt, uncertainty, and
complications.
Of course, this problem is inherent, if not intrinsic, in many cultures, and
the US is no exception. Here we have what many think of as one of the
fairest legal systems in the world--it's often rhetoricized as one of the
best *possible* systems. It is an essentially polar system in which the
prosecution's job is simply to convict and the defense's job is simply to
acquit; the judge's job is usually simply to enforce rules of procedure and
to sentence.
No one, in this equation, has the explicit occupation of ensuring fairness,
revealing truth, or guaranteeing justice. That doesn't enter into it. I'm
not casting stones, per se, but rather illuminating a point most people don't
like to think about.
> I think this is actively destructive.
I side with Anaximander. *Everything* is actively destructive. You have to
be choosy about what is more important, because everything destroys something
else.
> Concious malice, concious folly -- someone doing as they desire
> without regard for the consquences thereof -- concious refusal to
> stand and deliver, these are things I hold it better not to suffer.
Perhaps that *is* better. But these are things I don't believe I can always
accurately judge, and I try not to be hasty in my judgments. People *are*
foolish, by their inseparable nature, and I've never known anyone who had
special dispensation from this curse. Nor have I ever known anyone who would
not occasionally crave--and perhaps deserve--the kind of sufferance you
profess to reserve.
> >It's rather like justice. Some people want revenge; no one really wants
> >justice; everyone wants mercy for themselves and those they love. Maybe it's
> >wise to suffer fools a little. You know, give slack to get slack.
>
> If I'd encountered any in the first twenty years of my life, I would
> very likely be a different person.
If you have but have not perceived it, more's the irony; if you truly have
not, more's the pity, except that I tend to reserve pity and in its place
allow sympathy. I'm honestly sorry if you have received no slack. Perhaps
the religious are correct when they instruct us that to get slack, one must
give slack. Candide was right, I think, in saying that we must cultivate our
gardens.
> As it is, well, I much prefer honesty to the absence of pain, I think
> mercy is a nonsensical concept, and I have sincerely regreted the
> social unacceptability of tripping certain sorts of fools down the
> stairs more than once before now.
I think the issues of honesty and pain are too complex to be described
axiomatically. Mercy is a subjective term, but I believe it is necessary for
life. Sometimes fools do seem to need a shove in the right or wrong
direction, but I'd advocate caution; we are all fools, and we may be least
aware of our own stupidities.
> You know that line about it not taking all kinds, we've just _got_ all
> kinds?
>
> It's not a statement about relative worth.
It's an irrelevant conjecture, to me, as we only have the one data point. We
don't know what it does or doesn't take; given the for all we know very real
possibility of collapse, I'd hope we were trepidatious about experimenting.
Still, nothing in this reply is intended to convey any sort of ill will, and I
hope no such inference is made.
But if you seek to struggle with the world, make sure your strategy allows you
hope of winning, nu?