Heaven and Earth Binary System Question?

[marvo]

Hi everyone. I have been using the awesome Heaven and Earth program and have a question about binary systems. The system diagram show multiple stars on the same top level as the main star. However it also show 'companion stars' in one or more of the orbits. See the 3 star system below:

SYSTEM DETAILS
--------------

System Name: Caladbolg

PBG: 710

PRIMARY SYSTEM F7 V

0 Caladbolg I Alpha G100465-9 Sc
1 Caladbolg I Beta H100115-A Re
8 Caladbolg I Beta Ay YS00000-0
15 Caladbolg I Beta Bee YS00000-0
3 Companion Star
4 Caladbolg I Epsilon B365776-A Ag Ri
9 Companion Star
11 Caladbolg I Mu H376536-9 Sc
12 Caladbolg I Nu H321567-9 Co Sc
13 Caladbolg I Xi H755618-9 Sc

BINARY SYSTEM M0 D

0 Caladbolg II Alpha X000000-0

TRINARY SYSTEM M4 D

0 Caladbolg III Alpha Y100164-9
3 Caladbolg III Alpha Ay YR00000-0
8 Caladbolg III Alpha Bee YS00000-0
30 Caladbolg III Alpha See YS00127-9
1 Caladbolg III Beta H101000-A Re

Created using 'Traveller Heaven & Earth (V 1.0.4)'

Does this mean that the binary and trinary stars are actually in orbits 3 and 9 around the primary? I have always assumed that the companion stars would be so much further away that they would be well outside the planetary orbital zones. If not then, in the example above, planet 4 would have a really weird climate and drastic tides.
Any thought anyone?

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

I always went on the notion that the Companions were ignited Gas Giants, those that through internal force have generated enough energy to light up (well, hopefully billions of years ago...) These do alter the climate, of course, but to a manner that is set by the program... I think the program accounts for this... plus therier mass is small enough that they fill the same role as they would as a Gas Giant in the system hierarchy...

Planet four may not have as weird a climate as stated... the twin companions could be a vital part of its ecological structure... there would be extremes of climate and tides, yes... and it would probably be more geologically active than earth would, if the stars were putting the squeeze on it, literally... but a lot of these could be over come by TL A, to a point... (weather control, advanced environmental engineering of structures, etc...like what they do in Japan, California, netherlands... adapt the building to the environment...)

This may or may not make sense... but i hope it does, because that program does rule indeed, and I use it all the time...

I'm glad you asked this one... because I wondered about it meself...

 

[Malenfant]

That system seems flat out broken to me.

Let's just lay this out a bit better:


</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">
PRIMARY SYSTEM F7 V

0 Planet
1 Planet + 2 moons
2 (Empty Orbit)
3 Companion Star 1 (M0 D)
0 Planetoid belt

4 Habitable Mainworld
5 (Empty Orbit)
6 (Empty Orbit)
7 (Empty Orbit)
8 (Empty Orbit)
9 Companion Star 2 (M4 D)
0 Planet +3 moons
1 Planet

10 (Empty Orbit)
11 Planet
12 Planet
13 Planet</pre>[/QUOTE]CT rules (book 6, p 23) state that "orbits farther than the companion must be numbered at least two greater than the companion's orbit number". So by those rules, the Mainworld can't be in orbit 4 - it must be in orbit 5 (two beyond the inner companion's orbit 3).

The outer companion in orbit 9 limits the orbits available for everything else. So orbits 0-4 (up to 1.6 AU) and orbits 11+ (beyond 77.2 AU) around the primary are available. The outer companion can also have orbits up to orbit 4 (up to 1.6 AU).

The inner companion can then be placed in orbit 3 around the primary, which means that orbit 0-1 (up to 0.4 AU) and orbits 5+ (beyond 2.8 AU) are available. The inner companion itself can have worlds in Orbits 0 or 1 around it only.

Thus, if I've figured that out right, the inner companion's 'outer limit' will covers all the available orbits around the primary - you can't have any worlds between the two companions. More precisely, orbits 2-10 around the primary should be empty orbits, with the exception of Orbit 3 (inner companion) and orbit 9 (outer companion).

If you're using GT: First In rules instead (but are sticking with the distances corresponding to CT orbit numbers), then the primary and outer companion can each have planets orbiting at a distance of less than 12.93 AU around them (within Orbit 7), or planets can be orbiting both stars beyond a distance of 116.4 AU (i.e. Orbit 11+ around the primary).


So the inner companion can easily be located in the allowed zone around the primary. BUT... the primary and inner companion can each have planets orbiting at a distance of less than 0.33 AU around them (i.e. Orbit 0 only), or they can have planets orbiting both stars between a distance of 3 AU up to the 12.93 AU limit (i.e. Orbit 6 or 7 around the primary). That means you can't have a mainworld in orbits 4 or 5 around the primary.

So it looks like H&E may have generated something that doesn't fit either the Book 6 or First In rules.


That aside...

Does this mean that the binary and trinary stars are actually in orbits 3 and 9 around the primary?

Yes. The inner companion orbits the primary at a distance of 1 AU, and the outer companion orbits the primar at a distance of 38.8 AU.

I have always assumed that the companion stars would be so much further away that they would be well outside the planetary orbital zones.

Not at all. Plenty of companions are found at distances that would place them well within Pluto's orbit in our solar system. Though I think it's more usual for a trinary companion to be located further out.

If not then, in the example above, planet 4 would have a really weird climate and drastic tides.

Well, it very much looks like it can't be in Orbit 4, using any generation system. Looks like you'd have to place it around one of the companion stars.


On a reality-check front, the current system is pretty fubared too - you have two white dwarfs there. That means you once had two red giants, which means that any world in their vicinity is toast. So they can't have planets, and the inner companion would have roasted any worlds between it and the primary (if indeed it didn't actually start transferring mass to the primary star when it got big overflows its roche lobe).

The simple solution to that would be to replace the Ds with Vs, so you have two low-mass M type Main sequence stars there instead - then you wouldn't have any luminosity problems. (I'd suggest doing this with almost all the D stars generated in Traveller, in fact - there are WAY too many white dwarfs generated!). But then you'd have to lose the moons around the planets in orbit o around the outer companion, because that world will certainly be tide-locked.

The system is also pretty young, since the F7 V can only be about two and a half billion years old, tops. That doesn't bode well for nice habitable earthlike worlds with fully developed ecosystems there.

Any thought anyone?

Yeah - make sure you doublecheck the systems generated with the rules in the books!

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Baron Saarthuran von Gushiddan:
I always went on the notion that the Companions were ignited Gas Giants, those that through internal force have generated enough energy to light up (well, hopefully billions of years ago...)

That would be an impossibility though. Gas giants don't just 'ignite' like that - you have to add enough mass to initiate fusion in the core (so they're more than about 80 Jupiter masses), and even then they'd be dim M V stars.

This may or may not make sense... but i hope it does, because that program does rule indeed, and I use it all the time...

I'm glad you asked this one... because I wondered about it meself...

Unfortunately it seems that in this case the system is broken . Was this a system that was randomly generated by the program?

 

[Malenfant]

Hrm. I just randomly generated a trinary in H&E using CT rules, and it placed the inner companion in Orbit 5 and a planet in orbit 4 around the primary... and there shouldn't be any worlds in orbits 3 and 4 around the primary because of the forbidden zone around the companion.

I think there's a bug in H&E here...

 

[Straybow]

I don't have anything beyond the basic 3 LBBs, so I have no idea what the standard orbits are. But in general, a planet can only have a stable orbit less than one quarter the separation between the stars, or greater than double the separation. Doesn't sound like 2 orbits is anywhere near enough of a buffer.

With a trinary it is just as likely that the 3rd star won't orbit in the plane of the first two. Even with a binary system a companion star doesn't necessarily orbit in the eccliptic of the primary star.

 

[Malenfant]

It's a whole lot more complicated than that in reality - the size of the "forbidden zone" depends on the mass ratio of the stars.

 

[marvo]

Thanks everyone. I see everyone agrees with me to some extent. If you want to try it yourself this system is Spinward Marches 1329

1329 Caladbolg B365776-A Ag Ri 710 S Im F7 V M0 D M4 D

I used a random number seed of 4287 and MT system generation. Interestingly enough if you us CT, MT or TNE settings you get the same system. If you change it to Gurps then you get an even more bizzare system. Changing the random number seed and then running the program again creates a totally new system. After a few tries I got a more believable sytem with the Trinary star listed as 'far' and the Binary star at 38AU's. I used 870 as the random number seed if you want to try it for yourself.
Here are a few coments on reply posts in this thread.

I always went on the notion that the Companions were ignited Gas Giants

I have used this too, but there are far to many of them. It works for a few systems though.

Yeah - make sure you doublecheck the systems generated with the rules in the books!

I usually do, that was part of the reason for this post. Problem is, as people have pointed out, the rules change depending on which version you look at. I like the MT World Builder the best, but I don't have enough time on my hands to do it all manually.

replace the Ds with Vs, so you have two low-mass M type Main sequence stars there instead - then you wouldn't have any luminosity problems. (I'd suggest doing this with almost all the D stars generated in Traveller, in fact - there are WAY too many white dwarfs generated!).

Here, here. Agree totally. With so many white dwarfs there wouldn't really be many planets left.

Bottom line here seems to be that there is a bug or two in H&E. Regenerating the system with different random seeds seems to eventually give something 'reasonable'. Doing it by hand is probably the best, but if you need world maps of every body in a system H&E is a must. Of course the best thing about it is that it's free.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by marvo:
Here, here. Agree totally. With so many white dwarfs there wouldn't really be many planets left.

The scary thing is that there is actually a rule in the Extended System Generation in Book 6 that says that if you already have a habitable system, you should add a DM of +4 to the primary star type and size... which means that it's vastly more likely that the primary will be a subwarf or a white dwarf, since those occupy the high-roll end of the chart!!

Fortunately, this seems to have been summarily ignored later on...

 

[Telsor]

Originally posted by Baron Saarthuran von Gushiddan:
I always went on the notion that the Companions were ignited Gas Giants, those that through internal force have generated enough energy to light up (well, hopefully billions of years ago...)

Yes, that's true as far as it goes...but only to the same degree as the primary is an ignited gas giant.

It would be extremely unlikely that a given gas giant would suddenly ignite however..it's dependant on the mass of the gas giant, and that changes very slowly. Gas giants do put out radiation....so provided that the E ( radiation ) expended is less than the M ( mass added due to gravity )* C^2, it'll keep getting bigger, and, provided this keeps going, it'll ignite, but that process will take millions of years, so it's freakishly unlikely to happen in a particular time/place.

Planet four may not have as weird a climate as stated... the twin companions could be a vital part of its ecological structure... there would be extremes of climate and tides, yes... and it would probably be more geologically active than earth would, if the stars were putting the squeeze on it, literally... but a lot of these could be over come by TL A, to a point... (weather control, advanced environmental engineering of structures, etc...like what they do in Japan, California, netherlands... adapt the building to the environment...)

I think it would be very tough to live on, and very unlikely that there is any indigenous lifeforms above the basic levels. A spacefaring civilisation might have a colony there, but they would probably want to avoid the surface for the reasons you mentioned...I'd suggest grav/orbital cities, maybe controlling robot miners.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Telsor:
It would be extremely unlikely that a given gas giant would suddenly ignite however..it's dependant on the mass of the gas giant, and that changes very slowly. Gas giants do put out radiation....so provided that the E ( radiation ) expended is less than the M ( mass added due to gravity )* C^2, it'll keep getting bigger, and, provided this keeps going, it'll ignite, but that process will take millions of years, so it's freakishly unlikely to happen in a particular time/place.
[/QB]

Um, the gas giant isn't getting mass added to it. Once it finishes forming, that's it. Any subsequent mass addition (through say, asteroid or comet impacts) is utterly negligible.

Plus the (IR) radiation emitted by jovians comes from gravitational contraction.

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

Its a big jump from "happens over a gazillion years" to "Suddenly" I , Of course was not suggesting that a stray spark or something set off the hapless gas giant into ignition "Yesterday" or in anyones lifetime... but I would't go so far as to use the word "Impossible" in the Cosmological arena, as there is much that goes unseen... who can say for certain sure, What?

 

[Telsor]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Telsor:
It would be extremely unlikely that a given gas giant would suddenly ignite however..it's dependant on the mass of the gas giant, and that changes very slowly. Gas giants do put out radiation....so provided that the E ( radiation ) expended is less than the M ( mass added due to gravity )* C^2, it'll keep getting bigger, and, provided this keeps going, it'll ignite, but that process will take millions of years, so it's freakishly unlikely to happen in a particular time/place.

Um, the gas giant isn't getting mass added to it. Once it finishes forming, that's it. Any subsequent mass addition (through say, asteroid or comet impacts) is utterly negligible.

Plus the (IR) radiation emitted by jovians comes from gravitational contraction. [/QB]</font>[/QUOTE]Mass added...Negligable over a short/medium time frame, yes, but add a tonne of junk a year for a couple of million years and it starts to add up. ( I did mention I was talking *loooong* term )..It's the same process as solar system creation, although I agree it does slow as time goes on ( and there is less junk to attract ), it never really stops. That said, I agree we are talking very long time frames here, and still only on those gas giants which are borderline stars to start with.

Radiation. The energy doesn't come from nowhere, and while we don't really understand the formation of gravity currently, we have to assume that *something* creates it, so probably mass gets expended...I was speaking more generally though, and a sub/proto star would presumably start putting out other kinds of radiation as well. Some (many? ) might stop at this point as inputs start to balance with outputs.

 

[Malenfant]

Well, even if you were to add 1 billion (metric) tons of material *every year* for a billion years, the mass only goes up by 1e21 kg. Jupiter's mass is about 2e27 kg, so every billion years the mass would go up by a mere 1/50,000,000th of the planet's mass! That is utterly, utterly negligible.

It's really not going to make any difference. And if you're considering those objects that are borderline stars anyway, that mass ratio is going to be about 10 times smaller since they're at least 10 times more massive.

The IR radiation comes from the adiabatic compression of the material at depth in the jovian. As it it is gradually compressed by the material above it, it warms up, and that heat makes its way out of the jovian by convection.

 

[Straybow]

I cringe whenever I hear about events or weapons that ignite gas giants, make stars go nova, etc. Even A.C. Clarke's 2010 made me groan at the notion that monoliths could create a massive core to ignite Jupiter in just a few years.

When I saw Star Wars at age 13 the Death Star blowing up a planet was cool. After a little science education I came to my senses that no device built could significantly affect a planetary or stellar mass.