The Great flow of life-OOC thread-Full

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 02/01/2011 12:31:53

Veoline wrote:Are you talking about the apparent magnitude of the moons?

The moon has an apparent magnitude ranging from 12.92 to 2.5, so other moons shouldn't be too far from that. Besides, even if the last moon was not visible at the naked eye, it'd be a perfect excuse to devellop magnifying technologies.
And the moon is around 3000 km in diameter. So a moon half its size would be 1500 km in diameter. That's still quite significant, I believe, and would be sufficient to make the moon visible. And it could simply be closer to the planet then the terran moon.
Also, I was thinking of something: what if the planet was in orbit of a gas giant?

That would really mess up days, nights, and seasons. Half of the time the planet would probably be in the gas giant's shadow causing complete darkness. This would also cause the planet to cool drastically during this time. Years would also be much shorter since the planet has a much smaller celestial body to orbit around.

The gas giant orbits around the sun as well.

But it was just a proposition. Note that the axis of the gas giant could be parallel to the plane of the system, like Uranus, and the moons would orbit around this axis, thereby never being shadowed by the giant. But the moon would be in a tidal lock, which would be, I concede, quite annoying.
As I said, it was just a proposition, so you are free to accept or refuse.

Magnitude. Hmm...
The planet would have various gases at higher levels. I'm liking that idea.

What's the link between magnitude and gases? I'm not talking about altitude, don't mistake yourself.

Oh, the gases was about the gas giant. The magnitude part was me confirming that I was before talking about magnitude of the moons.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 02/02/2011 00:08:05

Finally got the time to upload a picture for my race. It's not nearly as good as I had hoped it would be, but here it it anyways.

On another note, we need more IC posts!

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 02/02/2011 06:26:58

I agree. But it is true all the details about how the Rp functions, how times passes, details about our world, have been occulted, and we need to precise them first.

I'll post IC later today, by the way.

Kaleb, okay. Sorry for the mistake! But aren't many gas giants like that? Some gases are lighter or denser then others, and thus float higher or lower, while being retained by the gravity of the planet within the ensemble which forms the planet.
So, yes or no, should we orbit a gas giant? It will define our environment, so we must decide, and be serious about it.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 02/02/2011 13:16:52

Orbiting a gas giant would have a huge affect on the tide, would it not?

That is what I was concerned about.
If the moon was indeed in a tidal lock, one half facing the sun, while the gas giant's axis would be parallel to the system's plane, the tides would only affect on half. But as you say, the effect would be huge anyways.

So, should we have the planet orbit a gas giant, yes or no?

Well, we'd have to think about all the other effects it could have.

Of course.

So, what effects would it have?

I can think of the following:

Negative:
-Casting a shadow on the planet
-Creating powerful tidal effects
-Causing meteors and asteroids to impact the planet by gravitational interference
-Interfering with natural geological processes, and deforming the planet due to gravity.

Positive:
-Providing many ressources when we get more technologically advanced.

I must admit there are more cons then pros.
It's to you to judge, of course. And we don't necessarily need to have an ideal planet either, too.

Of course, it would do us well to give our species some sort of challenge. My only worry would be that in addition to the ones you mentioned, there would be even more, less predictable problems.

I personally vote no for our planet orbiting a gas giant. While I do think some unique challenges that are exclusive to our planet would be interesting and fun to work with, there are just to many cons of orbiting a gas giant in my mind. Maybe you should make a poll?

Also I wanted to point out that our planet would likely have trouble keeping even a single moon if it's orbiting a gas giant, since the gas giant's gravity would likely overcome our own and pull the moon out of orbit around us.

As I said, it was just a suggestion.

I agree the cons outweigh the cons.

So, by popular refusal, it is no?

And I perfectly agree that the planet would most certainly not have any moons if it orbited a gas giant.

I could change my people quite easily to suit a gas giant as apposed to a moon.