So i was reading Dan Abnetts "Armour of Contempt" yesterday. While not a very sci-fiey story, i still enjoy to read it very much. Its set in the Warhammer 40k universe, so everything is BIG. WAY BIG.
The author described a typical imperial invasion striking an earthlike planet. Thousands of ships in low orbit with energy shields up, bombarding cities and fortresses with heat lances, while millions of smaller drop ships enter the orbit and spill out their troops.
In another scene, he describes that it rains for the first time on this planet for years and the characters attribute this to the invasion, the ship-weapons pushing around weather patterns, dropships en masse displacing air, also them bringing in "new" air from the outside, the energy shields also displacing clouds and other weather phenomena etc.
So this got me thinking "Thats actually an awesome way to set the atmosphere of an liberating invasion, i wonder if this is true".
And from my laymans point of view, it actually makes sense. Still i wanted to check it up with people more knowledgeable than me.
So whats your opinion or do you have facts?
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The repercussions of a massive planetary invasion
Wed, 2012-12-12 07:03
#1
GreyBrother
The repercussions of a massive planetary invasion
Wed, 2012-12-12 09:51
#2
Arenamontanus
Hmm, the atmosphere has a
Hmm, the atmosphere has a mass of about 5×10^18 kg. A million ships would each need to churn up about 10^13 kg, about the mass of a mountain. That doesn't sound too implausible for a BIG ship landing.
The average global wind speed is about 12 m/s
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/2010Q2/545/545_Ch_1.pdf
and if we put it into the kinetic energy formula we get a total wind energy of K=0.5mv^2=3.6*10^20 J. Using the Lorenz estimate on
http://www.claverton-energy.com/how-much-wind-energy-is-there-brian-hurl...
gives 7.6*10^20 J, so we are in the likely ballpark. This energy is about the total world annual energy consumption in 2010. It is about 3400 Tsar bombas.
Realism and Warhammer is a bit unusual combination, but in this case given the assumed size of the invasion it sounds fairly plausible.
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Wed, 2012-12-12 10:50
#3
Smokeskin
I'd imagine that most of that
I'd imagine that most of that energy would end up as heat rather than kinetic energy though. With air's specific heat of 1 kJ/kg/K that gives us a temperature rise of just .07 Celsius - and that's just the atmosphere, since the ground and oceans are going to absorb heat it will be a lot less.
The climate effects of such an invasion would probably limit itself to the rise of atmospheric particles from smoke and vaporized materials from the bombardment, which on that scale would darken the planet like a nuclear winter scenario.
Wed, 2012-12-12 16:34
#4
GreyBrother
Awesome to see that its
Awesome to see that its actually feasable.
So what scenarios could be possible on some different sample worlds?
Fri, 2012-12-21 08:18
#5
rfmcdonald
I think Warhammer 40K is
I think Warhammer 40K is quite realistic. It's just that its realism is terrifying and demoralizing. :-)
Fri, 2012-12-21 10:05
#6
Lilith
It's where grimdark got its
It's where grimdark got its name!
Fri, 2012-12-21 20:47
#7
GreyBrother
Yeah, but i love to find that
Yeah, but i love to find that quite big parts of the actually hilarious background are actually justified.