On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Science Fiction

[lin robinson]

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

Like I said, not the forum for such matters. Everybody has a right to their own belief system.

 

[Anthony G Williams]

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

Like I said, not the forum for such matters. Everybody has a right to their own belief system.

Something which I didn't notice you respecting in post #213.

 

[Ursa major]

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

The Nile has two sources: the system of rivers and lakes around Lake Victoria (which feeds the White Nile) and the Ethiopian Highlands (which feed the Blue Nile, providing the water for the inundation - now no more since the damming of the river upstream from Aswan).

The "geology" of Egypt has nothing to do with it.

 

[lin robinson]

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

Something which I didn't notice you respecting in post #213.

Sure I did. I merely mentioned that is a belief system, kind of mystical. You're welcome to it.

I shouldn't have raised such issues in this thread, though.

 

[ktabic]

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

The Nile has two sources: the system of rivers and lakes around Lake Victoria (which feeds the White Nile) and the Ethiopian Highlands (which feed the Blue Nile, providing the water for the inundation - now no more since the damming of the river upstream from Aswan).

The "geology" of Egypt has nothing to do with it.

True, Egypt has the Nile by luck, simply because it's perfectly placed to be the perfect outflow of the Ethiopian Highlands and the Tanzania/Kenya/Ugandan catchment areas. But thats geology again - it's lower than both the Highlands and Lake Victoria. The source of both parts of the Nile is a result of geology - just not the geology in Egypt.
Lake Victoria has a huge catchment area, the majority of rivers in three countries lead to it, and it needs to flow out somewhere.
The Highlands act as a normal mountain range - forcing air upwards, cools the air, condensation, rainfall. Again the rain needs to go somewhere.

Hmm, I should have said that the beginnings of rivers are a product of physical environment. After formation, it's generally downhill.

 

[Anthony G Williams]

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

Sure I did. I merely mentioned that is a belief system, kind of mystical. You're welcome to it.

So you regard these comments as showing respect for other people's beliefs?

Ah, a belief in things unseen. An extremely impractical bit of stage magic of the kind that makes people scratch their heads over the typical mechanistic evolution dogma, but it's a cute belief.

Kind of mystical.

Then retreat and claim that you have a right to your belief system when it's pointed out that genetic mutations have a sound basis in testable, objective evidence, which contrary religious beliefs do not? Looks like double standards to me. There's a saying you might note: "people who live in glass houses should not throw stones".

 

[lin robinson]

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

THere's another saying, "Who gives a sh*t?"

I'm sure you heard it. If you want to nurse your horrible wounds, fine. I said I shouldn't have gotten into discussing your religious beliefs. Twice. If you want to continue to drag them around a thread they don't belong, howling for justice or whatever it is you want, feel free.

I said I shouldn't have brought it up. I'm not discussing it anymore. You can do likewise or not.

 

[Anthony G Williams]

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

My my, what a tantrum!

For the record, we were not discussing my religious beliefs. I don't have any. We were discussing the scientific basis for genetic mutations.

 

[Cheehwawa]

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

Question 1:
Say that there's a hot-jupiter, a gas giant close to the sun, could its moon potentially be habitable and Earth-like if it were a little bigger than Mercury?

Question 2:
Say that a mini-black hole were created in the atmosphere due to some divine happenings. Would said black hole blow the planet to smitherines? Or would it just suck in the surrounding debris and then collapse due to not being in a vacuum?

Question 3:
When making up a planetary map, what's your stance on making the continents looking similar in size/basic shape to those on Earth? And what about naming conventions? Do you think using very unique "fantasy" named such as Cheydiinhal from Oblivion would be better than having a name from mythology/religion?

 

[chopper]

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

not being any kind of scientist, i'll randomly pick #3 to answer.....

the maps i draw do tend to have some aspects of our own continents about them - we only have one planet to use as reference after all. it's entirely up to you, but i want a map to conform to very basic geographic/geological rules, otherwise i cn't believe in that place. so, no baking deserts right next to the polar ice caps, coastlines that look a little rugged, not many "box-shaped" islands, etc etc

as far as naming conventions go, that's a whole different kettle of ferrets. it all boils down to one simple question: can the inhabitents of any given place pronounce it's name? if not, you're in trouble.

s

 

[chrispenycate]

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

Habitable by what? The hot gas giants they've detected are too close to their stars to be in the liquid water zone, onless the star in question is very small and cool. (see Robert Forward's "Rocheworld" for a detailed examination of that situation)
Of course, it could be that they've detected them because they're so close to their stars, and that there's a whole range of different planetary systems on offer, with gas giants varying from so close they're ripped apart in a couple of hundred million years to out in the cold depths where the comets hibernate; they'd be muuch more difficult to detect further out, with gravitational wobble reduced to a shiver, and refected starlight. We really can't tell without going to see. In this case there's no reaon why there shouldn't be an Earthlike world, and all you've got to worry about are the differences between being a planet and a moon; eclipses, magnetic flux lines, paeticle storms and the like that all authors have to worry about (not romance writers? Dear me, what do they find to interest their readers?)
I suspect (interpolation; means a guess) that a system-forming disc with enough hydrogen in it to form a close super-Jupiter is going to be short of heavier elements (above iron) I'd have to think about what that would do for a colony: for a locally evolved ecology, it's fine) and that the moons are less likely to be rocky, and more to be cometoid, with lots of volatiles and a dense atmosphere, but that might be completely off, it might simply be a question of rotation and turbulence in the original mass, that was going to collapse into stars, planets et al.

Now, black holes ; how big are we talking about ? Megatonnes, gigatonnes ?
As far as I can see, no black hole has any tendency to explode (and “blowing a planet to smithereens” might take more energy than you’re considering. Blowing the atmosphere off it and rendering it unihabitable, that’s one thing. Actually getting enough kinetic energy into the core that the elements would diverge, rather than recoalescing, that’s considerably more problematic. I was part of a ‘destroy the Earth’ club for a while, for whom merely anhilating humanity was nowhere near good enough and it’s surprisingly difficult.) A black hole is the essence of ‘implode’, of not let anything escape, even light. The tendency would be for it to fall to the centre of the planet and wait for the rest of the planet to fall into it. Due to conservation of rotational inertia, a few bits would escape, but little fragments, no bigger than a city. Not that this would interest the ex-inhabitants much.
The length of time this would take would be totally dependent on the original mass, and the amount of energy released considerable; I suspect it would be detectable several solar systems away, if it went fast (‘fast’ being tens of years rather than tens of thousands)

 

[Cheehwawa]

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

Hmmmm interesting. So you're saying that if a large enough black hole formed inside of the atmosphere, it could potentially destroy a world leaving behind asteroids floating around in space?

So... the black hole forms and suck in the atmosphere, then it falls into the core of the planet as it gains power and then it sucks the rest of the planet in, destroying it in the process? And if it were to collapse due to not being made by "natural" means would it expel ALL material or just some small to city-sized asteroids?

 

[chrispenycate]

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

Don't forget that a planetary mass black hole would be invisibly small. and, unless it were in orbit (yes, it could orbit within the atmosphere: friction would be negligible for a mass that great of so little size) it would dive into the planet. If it was larger than an atomic nucleus (doubtful; there's a reasonable risk it's dimensionless) any matter it came into contact with would just be absorbed, so drilling would be practically unimpeded.

A small hole wouldn't slow much, would traverse the planet's core and come out the other side. A larger one would collect a lot more matter on the way through and, despite its greater inertia, might slow down enough not to come back through the crust. Neither would much effect the atmosphere.

The hole would then plunge back towards the centre (you don't want to know the exact vector with orbital corrections, do you?) , and through, and past, and collect a few more kilos of mass, and lose a couple of mm per second of speed, and do it again, and ultimately achieve relative stability close to the centre.

Here pressure would force mass into it's absorption range continuously, and the infall energy would further heat the core, and, for a while the expansion would balance the missing matter. How long this time would be is difficult to calculate – weeks, decades, milliseconds – but after that, the missing volume would start to make itself felt. Earthquakes, tidal fluctuations, general bad vibes as the interior of the planet contracted, and the outside pulled it down. Still, the rotary momentum would be the same, so as the diameter grew smaller it would spin ever faster. That, and the fact that the collapse would not be smooth and regular, like deflating a balloon, but any old how as some structures resisted and others collapsed, is what throws off a few chunks with escape velocity or greater The inner core is at plasma temperatures now and, whenever cracks appear in the crust, it shines through like a miniature star; this planet is no longer a very good place to live.

Looks back over his text; you know, I think they stickied tis thread to keep me out of mischief elsewhere. You don't need any more details, do you?

 

[Anthony G Williams]

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

I'm trying to recall the title of the book in which an alien race dropped a small black hole into the Earth so it orbited within the planet, gradually absorbing and destroying it. A small number of people survived, having been taken off-planet by a more friendly alien race, and a long interstellar legal action then started against the perpetrators (unless I'm mixing up two different plots!).

 

[Hilarious Joke]

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

I love the idea of a city just flying off the planet for adventures through the solar system. Of course, everyone would die pretty quickly.

 

[Anthony G Williams]

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

I love the idea of a city just flying off the planet for adventures through the solar system. Of course, everyone would die pretty quickly.

The author thought of that one

 

[chrispenycate]

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

When I said "City-sized" I wasn't thinking of actual city; it's just that there's nothing much between the scale of a mountain and a small country. Besides, they're going to be in majority from equatorial regions, because of the pirouette effect (Quito, perhaps?)
But if you want your cities setting off, you need your spindizzies (you have read Blish's "A life for the stars", Earthman come home" and "A clash of symbols" I trust?)

But the problem with all this is the timing; without doing experiments (and people are so unreasonably upset about me doing experiments) it's so difficult to estimate how long any section of this will take.

 

[asher marquering]

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

*claps*
amazing Chris
I'm actually scared to find out how much you actually do know

 

[Culhwch]

I've changed the title of this thread to 'On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Science Fiction' to complement Malloriel's thread on 'OCIW: Fantasy', seeing as how, as Mal rightly pointed out, this thread had become somewhat SF-heavy.

 

[whyzz]

Under what conditions could a near Earth-gravity planet exist that was

1) cold and dark on the surface, much colder than Mars

2) have geothermal energy available

3) so that far enough underground, it would be warm enough for humans to live and that the energy that would be put into their life support would come from the planet.

The mass or size could be different than Earth, but I don't want to try to work with gravity differences. I assume that the planet would have to orbit a star for geological stress, but that star is far away, or somehow dark...could a planet orbit a black hole if it were at just the right distance from the event horizon?

I've done a little reading on Moon-base and Mars-base environments, but would like to create a system that is both closed and self-sustaining with out solar gain.

There are some philosophical/social ideas I want to explore, and to do so, I want to remove weather, astronomical periodicity, and other atmospheric markers of time but on a planetary scale rather than on a space ship. Of course there would be similarities to a spaceship environment with air locks and such.

Hmmm, maybe I should set the story on facebook...