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Super Terran Discovered!

Great link. Thanks!
This has got to be a great time to be an astronomer. They must be dancing around like kids. :D
Does anybody know what they're measuring to find these and how small an object can they resolve?
Are moon findings on the horizon?

Too cool! :cool:
 
Mal knows!

I only know a little, and I think it involves measuring the gravitational "wiggle" of a Star's Path with a big Jupiter-like planet orbiting around it, as observed from Earth. I have no idea how they came up with the one at Gilese, but it must be some tiny measurements! A GREAT time to be into astronomy indeed!
 
I wonder if finding an earthlike world'd be sufficient motivation to send a mission with live crew there?
 
I'm skeptical of the idea that it's a normal rocky planet. I mean, it's about 7 earth masses, orbits about 0.02 AU from its primary for a blackbody temperature of about 385K (albedo and greenhouse affect would modify this). And of course it'd be tidelocked.

If it was rocky like Earth and had earth's density, it could have a radius of 12200 km and be 7 earth masses, but then the minimum molecular weight its atmosphere could hold would be about 2.07, just over what's necessary to hold hydrogen, but easily able to hold Helium. So it'd hold all gases in the atmosphere except hydrogen, which would stay for a while but slowly leak away into space. But then, if it could hold onto Helium, its atmosphere could be quite thick - thick enough to lower the bulk density of the planet.

It could have marslike density (3500 kg/m3) and be 14,200 km in radius and have an MMW retention of 2.4, which would be about the same as described above. That might be the sort of density a panthalassic should have, but the atmosphere would have to be rather thick to keep the water liquid at those temperatures.

Or it could have a Ganymede-like density (2000 kg/m3) and be 17,100 km in radius and retain an MMW of 2.9. Again, the same sort of thing as above. This would make it more of a small helium gas giant really.


Either way, we might be looking at a 'helium subgiant' that can hold onto helium but not hydrogen, or some sort of strange tidelocked panthalassic world. That sounds more realistic to me than just 'a big earth'.
 
Aw...c'mon Mal... Give us a sample UWP, man!
 
I can't. Traveller worldgen can't accommodate this sort of world.

In my own system, it would be something like XCGA0000 or XCHA0000, depending on whether it was a panthalassic or a subgiant.
 
Not remotely complete I'm afraid. In fact, it's not moved beyond where I got up to last time (ie. stars, size, atmosphere).

Despite having all the time in the world now (being gainfully unemployed now) I never seem to get the chance to sit down and work on that more - probably because I end up spending most of my time hanging around on forums ;) .

But mostly, it's because I don't know what to do with it afterwards. Release it for free on my website (that'd be nice, but given I've spent most of my roleplaying 'career' working toward the goal of completely a realistic world design system, it'd be good to get some money for it...)? Generalise it and release it as an OGL PDF? Wait for the Limited License to be revealed? T5 is not an option, and while I would have liked to put it in CT+, that's been canned. I guess I could hope that Hunter might be interested in it if he does a GM equivalent to the T20 Players Guidebook...
 
You are unemployed? I'm sorry to hear. I had noticed your higher presence on the boards, but figured you had a cushy job that lets you access them frequently. Best of luck in finding something.

BTW, with the Limited License, it may still be possible to release a CT+, within what's been told to us so far.

I can understand where you are coming from, and if you do get it completed, know that there's at least one person that would like to see it. (Heck, I might even code it to see what kind of data it generates compared to older worldgen systems.
)

I imagine that a T20 GM's Guide won't be a practical goal for QLI until some of the backlog is taken care of. But once things are moving along, I'd say "ask Hunter and see what he says."

Oh, and I have to make the obligatory: don't forget about Stellar Reaches. ;)

Good luck,
Flynn
 
Don't worry, I haven't forgotten SR
. I'm just not sure it'd be the best medium for something like this though...

Plus I haven't really looked at the worldgen for a while. Right now I'm spending most of my time learning Burning Wheel and how to use Lightwave. And mining in EVE Online so I can get a battleship... ;) .
 
Only a couple? ;)

We'll see. This is a pretty huge task, and I found out last time I looked at it that there were still a few problems.
 
Then please finish up the system and try to get it published. You definitely know your planetology and I think it'd be something interesting to see.
 
X-CAA000-0
perhaps...
An exotic atmosphere, and some (probably non-water) liquid layer, dense enough to swim in...

Also, could not the helium (which would still be rising to the exosphere, just not "running away because gravity is too low") be blown out of the exosphere by the solar wind?

I ask, because some scientist mentioned similar with earht and some gasses should the magnetic system fail.
 
Pulsars have always been noteworthy for their regularity. Spotting a planet by solar perturbation sounds like a romantic means of visualising a pulsar. This technique of identifying planets with "star wobble" was used in the late '90s by French astronomers to report on a Jupiter sized mass orbiting its primary in under the space of 24 earth hours. Yeah, maybe in a Bugs Bunny cartoon...
 
The Math does work for that Jupiter sized mass, tho, once you remember that it's own mass has to figure in... get one that close, and it WILL be going around THAT fast. Cause said jovian is big enough that it's own gravity well is affecting the pull significantly... (I worked the math out in about 01... it checked. I couldn't check the spectrograms, but the gravity/orbit math worked. Or more correctly, I took the same mass and distance data data, and came up with the same orbital speeds, one I remembered to add each other's gravity....

They've been checking red/blue shift, BTW, to show the wobble.

Pulsars, however, have brightness and other spectral oddities not being found in the planetary system data...

The Interferometric Extrasolar Planet Finder Orbital Array (Oh, how treknobabblish that sounds) should be able to confirm MANY of the extant "Found" worlds. Single them out as pinpoint sources separate from their parent stars.

Yes, they are "Found" by deduction, but so was Atomic Fission, until certain experiments in Utah.
 
Incidentally, Sol, the guy you're talking about was Eric Wostickyan (definately spelled his name wrong). He found multiple planetary masses around psr+1275 back in the late 80s-early 90s. The story goes that when they were confirmed, he laughingly referred to them as 'Compton 1,2,and 3' , because the environments were completely hostile to all forms of life and could only have extremely violent environments. Astronomer humor. I guess you'd have to be there.
 
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