• Welcome to the new COTI server. We've moved the Citizens to a new server. Please let us know in the COTI Website issue forum if you find any problems.
  • We, the systems administration staff, apologize for this unexpected outage of the boards. We have resolved the root cause of the problem and there should be no further disruptions.

Fireball planets

V

veltyen

SOC-14 1K
An idea brought on by some local inclement conditions, and also a similar sitution described in "The player of games" by Iain Banks.

Real world biology. There are plants in Australia that only germinate in fire. The seeds are dropped yearly, but only start to sprout once the outside husk is burnt, and the core of the seed is exposed to extreme temperatures (about 80 degrees Celcius or so). To assist this these plants drop leaves and bark in high temperatures (ie in summer) and then spray the resultant tinder in flamable oil. On warm days the haze from these plants hangs in the air, the haze itself is flamable as well. Eventually a fire will start - from lightning or human intersession. The fire will consume the plants competitors, burn the adult plants, then leave a rich ash filled loam for the newly germinating seeds to grow in, giving a leg up over any competing plants in that niche.

Fires themselves can also cause lightning. The smoke rising in the air assisted by the flames gains significant charge causing more lightning strikes nearby.

Frankly I'm not quite sure why anyone outside Australia grows eucalypts.

In "The player of games" the same idea is espoused but in very slightly different ways.

Fascinatingly on Saturday (7th Feb) the bushfires we had here started to behave like either firebombing or FAE. High winds blew dried plant material into the air, mixed with the oils and started igniting explosively. The devastation caused resembled firebombed cities from WW2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_7_Victorian_bushfires Most Australian news sources will also have images at the moment.

Obviously this is a succesful biological process for some plants to adopt. An excellent narrative addition for any Man vs Nature themes.
 
There are other plants that require extreme heat to break (crack) the shell of the seed before they can germinate.

Some plants require a deep freeze/frost to aid in either germinating or producing an actual crop.

What you describe could always lead to interesting scouting party surprises.

Dave Chase
 
Another referee of my aquaintance created a world with a very slow rotation. Temperatures varied from deep cold to searing heat in the course of a "day" (which was something like three standard weeks long). Each "day" had a period of five or six standard-days in which temperatures were in the normal range for living organisms. During this short span the planet would spring to life, fed by meltwaters as the deep freeze thawed in the brief spring. As temperatures soared at the end of spring, the vegetation would die off, the meltwater would evaoprate to form massive thunderstorms, and the dead vegetation would ignite from lightning strikes, creating a layer of ash-mulch to protect the seeds set just days earlier. Eventually night would fall, the freeze would take hold, and in a couple of weeks the whole process would begin again.

From space, he described the day-side of the planet as resembling a series of wedges: water flooding from melting ice formed the first wedge, immediately following the eastern terminator, followed by a broad swath of brilliant green and orange prairies, followed by a line of storm clouds and burning vegetation, and then a wedge of seared desert approaching the western terminator.
 
I like it ... I'm always on the look out for newplanets, and new unique planetary conditions. No Hoth or Endor or Tatooine for me.

I'll certainly use this - if your ref doesn't mind!!!! :)
 
Imperial Planetologist said:
Not my referee, just another referee I know and correspond with from time to time. I don't think he'd mind, as long as it's not for publication.
Click to expand...
He shouldn't mind it even if it was for publication. The idea of worlds with slow rotation is pretty old. One of my favorite books is Beam Piper's Four Day Planet where the world makes one full revolution in 2000 hours ~four times per year. Great story, great setting, wonderfully realized society. I can't remember any others offhand, but I vaguely recall others. Maybe one by Hal Clement?



Hans
 
rancke said:
He shouldn't mind it even if it was for publication. The idea of worlds with slow rotation is pretty old. One of my favorite books is Beam Piper's Four Day Planet where the world makes one full revolution in 2000 hours ~four times per year. Great story, great setting, wonderfully realized society. I can't remember any others offhand, but I vaguely recall others. Maybe one by Hal Clement?
Click to expand...
Everything's been done before.

And yet we still have copyright laws.

Go figure.
 
Imperial Planetologist said:
Everything's been done before.

And yet we still have copyright laws.

Go figure.
Click to expand...

No much of a problem to figure. You can't copyright ideas, only specific expressions of ideas. You can patent ideas (some of them, at least) but only if they're original. And then there are trademarks, yet a third thing.


Hans
 
rancke said:
He shouldn't mind it even if it was for publication. The idea of worlds with slow rotation is pretty old. One of my favorite books is Beam Piper's Four Day Planet where the world makes one full revolution in 2000 hours ~four times per year. Great story, great setting, wonderfully realized society. I can't remember any others offhand, but I vaguely recall others. Maybe one by Hal Clement?

Hans
Click to expand...

Your reference to "Four Day Planet" got me thinking, so I Googled it. And lo and behold, I find the project Gutenberg site with that, and a shedload more out-of-copyright books for free - here's the link to "Four Day Planet"... http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19478 - enjoy!
 
Welcome to Trenco. You may or may not like EE Smiths Lensmans books but the planet Trenco was certainly interesting.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top