Recent content by Ralph Rotten

If you had made that point in your first post, then the argument would have been germane. But making that point ex post facto just makes it sound as if you are berating the educational system. Truly, the post had a rant-ish feel to it. And yes, tho this discussion is tongue in cheek, it is...

Or they could spend their time teaching children the difference between seem and seam. :) Yes, I agree, schools should teach more science. But that is not really germane to this conversation.

"Small Solar System Bodies" That's no moon...it's a space station!

"Small Solar System Bodies" Mebbe those are what need the renaming. Small solar system bodies doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. :-p Rename them Smoons.

I think the real defining point between a large object and a dwarf planet isn't mass, but that it has coalesced into a spherical shape. A dwarf planet is just like a planet...only smaller. But from what we saw from New Horizons, Pluto is round, has a moon (or binary dwarf) and even has oceans...

That thing you are describing is a dark star. To us humans it's just a rogue in the dark, but if you could see it in the Xray spectrum then it'd look like a small star. We always view things from our own perspective, but the definition of a star may have different meaning for some races out...

Planets lose their atmosphere all the time. It just dribbles off in a trail behind us. Smaller planets lose their atmo faster. Once you get like Mars, any liquid water is immediately turned to vapor when exposed to the atmosphere, and subsequently leaked behind the planet. Mars used to have a...

Interesting. I have been trying to get my mind to imagine life in a system where the nearest star is only 2 light days away. These are metal-poor stars, but a much lower escape velocity than our own star. The beings in the story come from a 1/3rd gravity moonmoon to the big rocky planet...

Don't smudge. Fact is stranger than fiction, and people are stranger than fact. As a reader I prefer a book that doesn't take liberties with established science. Speculative science, in areas that are still in dispute, that I don't mind.

I'm just researching possible life on a moonmoon in a the Groombridge34 binary star system for an upcoming novel.

Didja check out that article I linked about the massive rogue. Was that about the size you were thinking of, or a tad bigger?

I'm curious, if these were more powerful stars, how would that gap manifest itself, in practical terms? Would it be like space-turbulence, river rafting, or some kind of EMP effect? If you flew a modern spacecraft through a much more powerful gap, how would you feel it?

Ooooh, you could give it an elliptical orbit so part of the year they have to go underground as the moon passes through the edge of the radiation belt. One thing you can also consider is if the moon is tidally locked then you can hide on the back side of the planet from most of the radiation...

I still think Pluto should be a planet. :frown:

Here is Jupiter. The lines are magnetic field, and the blue cloud in the middle is the radiation field. Something 6 times bigger would likely have a radiation zone 6x bigger. I could see life forms that would see it as a sun. If your eyes see in that spectrum, and radiation is like vitamin D to...