Very interesting. Thank you. This information should lead to some very high tech level adventures for the game.
Stellar Mass and size
- Thread starter Blue Ghost
- Start date
So, in following the discussion of Black Holes, I was also reading through Rescue on Galatea, the old FASA adventure. The included library data include Shadowsand, a world in the Far Frontiers sector that has a black hole as a primary. TravellerMap says the system has a G2V primary, but that's wrong. The canon source says "Black Hole".
The other interesting fact about Black holes is from XKCD, that a moon massed black hole is relatively stable. Black holes can evaporate through Hawking Radiation. But, apparently and I can't prove this, a lunar sized black hole is just large enough that the cosmic background radiation would balance the Hawking Radiaion.
For our "destroy the solar system scenario", instead of using a 3-10 solar mass black hole, use a much smaller one. Say Mars mass. It would be small enough not to affect the passage of the solar systems, very difficult to spot through gravitational lensing. It would not have much of an effect on the solar system until way too late. And if it hit your home world, the burst of radiation would probably sterilize half of the planet when it hit the atmosphere. But since is is the size of a pebble, it would pass right through the planet. And sterilize the rest of the planet on the way out.
The other interesting fact about Black holes is from XKCD, that a moon massed black hole is relatively stable. Black holes can evaporate through Hawking Radiation. But, apparently and I can't prove this, a lunar sized black hole is just large enough that the cosmic background radiation would balance the Hawking Radiaion.
For our "destroy the solar system scenario", instead of using a 3-10 solar mass black hole, use a much smaller one. Say Mars mass. It would be small enough not to affect the passage of the solar systems, very difficult to spot through gravitational lensing. It would not have much of an effect on the solar system until way too late. And if it hit your home world, the burst of radiation would probably sterilize half of the planet when it hit the atmosphere. But since is is the size of a pebble, it would pass right through the planet. And sterilize the rest of the planet on the way out.
That's interesting. I had initially envisioned something very cinematic. Something along the lines of a "visible" (whatever defines as being visible in terms of a black hole) "thing" that ominously moved into some solar system, and started siphoning off plasma from the corona of the system's central star, and you could see this happening from whatever planet the adventure started or occurred on.
But something that's more real, or has a basis in actual physics, might be more in line with traditional Traveller.
But something that's more real, or has a basis in actual physics, might be more in line with traditional Traveller.
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
Given how weird the real universe is proving to be as we get a better look, there is plenty of room for both.
Quite possibly. But it seems that classic era TL-15 high Imperial, would be at odds to set a playable black hole scenario.
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
Not really. At the speeds mentioned above, you need only place such an event in a sector that has not gotten extensive coverage, in a system next to a Gap or rift. Delphi, Daibei, Ilelish, Fornast, and Verge all come to mind in Imperial space, as do Ley, Glimmerdrift, Provence, Windhorn, Empty Quarter, and others.
So it is!
This is also included in the library data for Shadowsand in Dale Kemper's unpublished Far Frontiers manuscript for FASA. The library data didn't make it into Ares Magazine Special Edition #2 nor The Traveller Chronicle #3. In fact, the G2V data is from TTC#3.
Thanks for catching this - I'll make an update.
If you're not going for the black hole destroys the planet, home to billions, scenario you could make for an interesting IISS-style adventure.
So lunar sized black hole, in stable orbit in the oort cloud of the system.
Initially it would be a missing ship, when it's jump path intercepts the black hole, then is eaten. The radiation flash won't show up for months to a year.
Some investigation. Then the excitement of dealing with a lunar mass in a grain of sand without destroying the ship.
Next complication. The PCs (and their patron) are not the only people to figure out what's going on. A black hole would be, in real life, a huge find. It's a e=mc2 power source, exceeding the output of even a Fusion+ plant. It's large enough to require a major industrial investment to make work, but is worth every credit invested.
So there is a fight over the claim on the black hole, with the PC's at the center of it, trying to both stake a claim, not get shot full of holes, and not fall into the (otherwise invisible) black hole.
So lunar sized black hole, in stable orbit in the oort cloud of the system.
Initially it would be a missing ship, when it's jump path intercepts the black hole, then is eaten. The radiation flash won't show up for months to a year.
Some investigation. Then the excitement of dealing with a lunar mass in a grain of sand without destroying the ship.
Next complication. The PCs (and their patron) are not the only people to figure out what's going on. A black hole would be, in real life, a huge find. It's a e=mc2 power source, exceeding the output of even a Fusion+ plant. It's large enough to require a major industrial investment to make work, but is worth every credit invested.
So there is a fight over the claim on the black hole, with the PC's at the center of it, trying to both stake a claim, not get shot full of holes, and not fall into the (otherwise invisible) black hole.
Updated. I used "BH" for the stellar code, lacking any better ideas. Updated the Second Survey data docs too.
Also, I should note that I consider Far Frontiers as "Apocryphal" rather than canonical, so I would imagine this would get some scrutiny if the FASA materials are ever officially accepted into the OTU (fingers crossed!) But "Rescue..." is part of the FF canon, so definitely keeping this for now.
I guess ideally you could introduce the scenario to any location, but would the tech level of the system, and any tech brought in by the players, be able to handle the threat?
It seems like dealing with a black hole (size depending) falls into the "deus ex-machina" scheme of things. Of course the threads only touched on different sizes of black holes, and we haven't really examined the scale of threat of different sized black holes.
I loosely recall in Brian Greene's book "Fabric of the Cosmos" (also a PBS TV series) there there is something like tiny black holes that are smaller than sub-atomic particles all over the place, but that there's no energy or something to get them to interact with matter. I hope I'm recalling that correctly......maybe he meant "wormholes" or something.
Thoughts?
A Black Hole on the order of sub-atomic particle size/mass ranges would evaporate very rapidly thru Hawking Radiation. And at that scale, you would probably be dealing with Quantum Gravity effects, for which we do not currently have an adequate scientific model.
I'll have to bust out the book or DVD and try and find exactly what he said, but your remark on them evaporating rings a bell. I think he something about them forming and being destroyed (evaporating) all the time due to quantum mechanics as they are (or theorized to be) a product of quantum mechanics; ergo the reason we don't experience them in our everyday existence.
Black holes of every size evaporate through Hawking Radiation. The smaller they are, the faster they evaporate. Though at very small sizes you stop getting an evaporation, and start getting more of an explosion.
Or to think of it another way, the smaller the black hole, the hotter it gets. Solar mass black holes have a temperature of a few nano-kelvin. The lunar mass black hole is around 2 kelvin. Smaller holes get hotter exponentially.
I would imagine building a small sized (few tons) black hole as an energy source using grav tech would be an interesting TL17 or TL18 project.
Supernova of 1054 A.D. (imagine you're a medieval knight or peasant, and you look into the night sky to see a star go boom).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw-NtS3lM9w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw-NtS3lM9w
Sorry, I don't mean to spam my own thread, but apparently either a brown or red dwarf brushed by our solar system some 70,000 years ago;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt6Al6uz0hc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt6Al6uz0hc
It is possible it disturbed the Oort Cloud, but I think it wold be too far away for that.
Perhaps, but 70k years, in geologic and cosmologic time scales, is pretty recent. What if another Sun brushed by, only maybe it intersects with Pluto's or even Uranus's orbit, or closer?. Do you call in the Darriens for a Star Trigger (only to discover it doesn't work)?
I don't know how good an adventure seed that would be, but I think it's cool in a Traveller like vein.
I don't know how good an adventure seed that would be, but I think it's cool in a Traveller like vein.
Yeah, new enough a number of people saw it... but from what I remember of reading it on the article I found on news Google, it would have been too dim unless they had a telescope. 13th magnitude.
I don't know what the lack of electrical lights would have had on seeing back then.
I have been out where the only lights were flashlights, no LED ones back when I was a kid, and star seeing was very good.
edit: isn't Uranus or Neptune on its side ? I don't remember what astronomers have said did that.
I don't know what the lack of electrical lights would have had on seeing back then.
I have been out where the only lights were flashlights, no LED ones back when I was a kid, and star seeing was very good.
edit: isn't Uranus or Neptune on its side ? I don't remember what astronomers have said did that.
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