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Working on some exo-planet ideas. Wanted to know how believable these planets are

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Fri, 2013-11-08 00:19

thezombiekat thezombiekat's picture

Working on some exo-planet ideas. Wanted to know how believable these planets are

Working on some exo-planet ideas. Wanted to know how believable these planets are These where ideas for a first time gate crashing team so I don’t want anything that looks too valuable from the initial scan. Figure gates in caves make that more likely as they can’t fire the mapping missiles threw. Gate opens into a cave complex. Initial analysis, low value rock. Atmosphere mostly water vapour, World is mostly water, complex underwater eco systems. Large predators, extreme wave action generated by moon almost as massive as planet. And close orbit to star (or maybe it’s a binary moon of a hot Jupiter), players must deal with storms, tides that cover the gate and sea monsters for several hours until pickup. A life supporting world with the gate on a mountain so tall it is above most of the atmosphere. A great find but coming home with samples would be better, but it’s a long hike and anything could happen on the way. (Not if that works better with a heavy gravity to pull the atmosphere down or a light gravity to leave the mountain up). And of cause there is always the boring planet with a titan/exhuman/corporate settlement that was missed by the mapping missile (if one was usable) and being cut off from the gate when they move to the gate to do some transfers. Will they be finished before your scheduled pick up time (of cause not) and how much risk will you take scouting there base. Anybody got any other ideas

Wed, 2013-11-20 11:06

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

thezombiekat wrote:Gate opens

thezombiekat wrote:
Gate opens into a cave complex. Initial analysis, low value rock. Atmosphere mostly water vapour, World is mostly water, complex underwater eco systems. Large predators, extreme wave action generated by moon almost as massive as planet. And close orbit to star (or maybe it’s a binary moon of a hot Jupiter), players must deal with storms, tides that cover the gate and sea monsters for several hours until pickup.

Sounds good. Might be a high pressure world where the water vapor is close to critical (see Hal Clement's novel "Close to Critical" for weird ideas). Wave sizes depend on wind speeds, which in turn depend on temperature differences and Coriolis forces: if the planet is orbiting quickly and has low gravity, this would make sense. Low gravity also makes waves taller. Of course, big tides and fast rotation are incompatible over long geological periods of time, but maybe the world is young, is captured in an odd resonance orbit, or the local orbital dynamics was recently changed.

Quote:
A life supporting world with the gate on a mountain so tall it is above most of the atmosphere. A great find but coming home with samples would be better, but it’s a long hike and anything could happen on the way. (Not if that works better with a heavy gravity to pull the atmosphere down or a light gravity to leave the mountain up).

Neat, but unlikely to happen naturally. Mountain max heights scale as 1/gravity - twice the gravity, half the mountain size. Atmosphere height also scales as 1/gravity - twice the gravity, half the height. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_height ) A cooler atmosphere will be lower, as will a heavier, but if you want it to be plausibly life supporting you can likely not push things too far. Still, as Olympus and Mt. Everest show, you can have mountains that are are slightly more than one atmospheric scale height tall, which is already enough to make the climb hard. Now, an *artificial* mountain with internal exotic material structure, exponential tapering or well arranged hollows can be very tall. And might be hard to recognize as artificial without extensive testing. It would still be pretty suspicious. The fun case might be the very tall mountain that is unlikely but not totally implausible: maybe it is artificial, maybe not - how do you test it?

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Wed, 2013-11-20 11:16

bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture

Arenamontanus wrote:The fun

Arenamontanus wrote:
The fun case might be the very tall mountain that is unlikely but not totally implausible: maybe it is artificial, maybe not - how do you test it?

With a shovel? Or maybe explosives? (to create shock waves that will allow for geophone mapping of the interior structure of the mountain, not to blow it up!)

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"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

Wed, 2013-11-20 14:45

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

bibliophile20 wrote

bibliophile20 wrote:
Arenamontanus wrote:
The fun case might be the very tall mountain that is unlikely but not totally implausible: maybe it is artificial, maybe not - how do you test it?
With a shovel? Or maybe explosives? (to create shock waves that will allow for geophone mapping of the interior structure of the mountain, not to blow it up!)

"OK, here is the geophone map... looks totally normal. Igneous rock, traces of serious rifting on the north slope. Looks like you were wrong, Jin." "I don't trust that image. You know as well as I that it is easy to set up phonic metamaterials or active responders to fake the imagery if you plan ahead." "Across a bloody 30 kilometre mountain? You are fricking paranoid, man." "Not trusting implausible geology has kept me alive so far."

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Thu, 2013-11-21 14:53

bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture

Niiice...

Niiice... With the idea of off-the-wall exoplanets and systems, I've been generating up a fair number myself for my campaign; does anyone have any suggestions for where/how to post them? EDIT: After some consideration, I think I'll probably just do them thread by thread, a system for each, and put spoiler warnings for my players on the ones that they haven't encountered yet or haven't been fully fleshed out yet.

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"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin