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Author Topic: Hard Science Planets!  (Read 2071 times)

bowdown2q

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Re: Hard Science Planets!
« Reply #15 on: November 16, 2010, 03:03:12 pm »

Heh. I've got this crazy idea for a... damn, what's the word for an orbital body that rotates so that it always faces the star? One side sand desert, other glacial. Giant worm-things that migrate to the desert to spawn, huge colony of chemosythetic fungus-thing under the entire glacier (like Canada), and a summer storm so intense that the hottest part of the desert becomes a glass whirlwind.

I have notes on it someplace...I'll have to dig up the notebook.

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Re: Hard Science Planets!
« Reply #16 on: November 16, 2010, 03:22:50 pm »

That's tidally locked. They used to think that mercury was locked, but it isn't. Don't forget that you'd have crazy wind currents. It would be strange to see a tidally locked planet in a place where it could have a thick atmosphere, though, since a close world like mercury will get sunblasted by solar wind while a world safe from solar wind would be safe from tidal locking... though that assumes a sunlike star. A Red Dwarf (or a brown one) could have a gravitationally close planet that it hasn't blown the air off of.

Yeah, I could see that.
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Virex

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Re: Hard Science Planets!
« Reply #17 on: November 16, 2010, 03:33:49 pm »

Don't forget that a Red Dwarf is very small, so if something is tidal locked to it, it's going to be spinning around rather fast and as a result it will have very short years and days. The Coriolis effect is going to be MASSIVE on such a world.
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bowdown2q

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Re: Hard Science Planets!
« Reply #18 on: November 16, 2010, 03:37:29 pm »

Tidal locking? Hm... I thought it was something with an 'r'  ???

FOUND THE NOTEBOOK!
...pretty much what I said, heh. Glass sea, v. small temperate twilight b/t the ice/desert... hm. I thought I had more notes...
Yeah, the intense winds were part of it... and the Coriolis effect would change where my glass sea is, i think... or make the winds blow away from the desert... hrm. I remember that there's a water ocean where the glacier meets the desert, melting, and the worms spawn there and die. Something about recycling of resources, I don't recall.
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