Can Science Fiction Inspire Real Astrophysical Discoveries?

[GTOM]

In Sf, we can regularly see planets and other places that are very different from what we see on Earth, or even in the solar system.

How plausible are the following ones?

- Dense asteroid storm. Maybe a new planet is forming, or a giant comet recently shattered? Can such thing exist in a Lagrange point for prolonged time?

- Tatooine. Can theoritecally a planet have a relatively stabile, not very eccentric orbit around binary stars?

- Three stars system like in Three Body Problem. As far as i know, real Alpha Centaury isn't like that since the third star is very distant. Does the real planet (planets?) have a very chaotic orbit?

- (habitable) Storm planet. Maybe it is a moon of a giant planet, and tidal forces regularly create very strong winds, inhabitants has to burrow underground structures?

- Floating rocks. Real rocks exist that float on water due to lots of gas bubbles. Could they float in very dense atmosphere?

- Once habitable world destroyed by a cosmic catastrophe in a relatively short time? (Not in millions of years)

 

[Vanadium 50]

Can theoritecally a planet have a relatively stabile, not very eccentric orbit around binary stars?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumbinary_planet

Storm planet

Neptune.

Three stars system like in Three Body Problem.

The three body problem doesn't say these orbits are impossible. It says they are impossible to calculate using present analytic techniques.

 

[anorlunda]

Check the writings of Phillip Jose Farmer. He invented several bizarre planets and made them entertaining.

 

[essenmein]

In Sf, we can regularly see planets and other places that are very different from what we see on Earth, or even in the solar system.

How plausible are the following ones?

- Dense asteroid storm. Maybe a new planet is forming, or a giant comet recently shattered? Can such thing exist in a Lagrange point for prolonged time?

- Tatooine. Can theoritecally a planet have a relatively stabile, not very eccentric orbit around binary stars?

- Three stars system like in Three Body Problem. As far as i know, real Alpha Centaury isn't like that since the third star is very distant. Does the real planet (planets?) have a very chaotic orbit?

- (habitable) Storm planet. Maybe it is a moon of a giant planet, and tidal forces regularly create very strong winds, inhabitants has to burrow underground structures?

- Floating rocks. Real rocks exist that float on water due to lots of gas bubbles. Could they float in very dense atmosphere?

- Once habitable world destroyed by a cosmic catastrophe in a relatively short time? (Not in millions of years)

Asteroid storm: I would say its possible in the short term, say after a collision of larger bodies, but the density of mass would diffuse into the vacuum of space, I have no idea what the time frames would be.

Habitable storm planet: I think an advanced civilization realizing their planet is about to turn into a storm planet might be able to build underground to evade, but I don't know if it would work if it always had destructive storms, I guess depends on how bad. But the life on this planet would have had to survive without technology in the early stage of evolution on that planet, I think this is less likely as single cell organisms (ie the start of life here) would be a bit more vulnerable to destruction. Basically a chicken and the egg argument, if you need to build underground to survive, how did you evolve to be able to do that in the first place?

Floating rocks: Buoyancy is simply a ratio of densities (as long as there is some acceleration acting on them), if you have a gas dense enough rocks will float. The highest density gas we have (according to google at room temp and 1atm) is Tungsten hexaflouride, this has a density of 12.4g/l, or 0.0124g/cc, but this is still one order of magnitude lower density than water ice (~0.92g/cc). So the atmosphere would have to be much higher pressure to increase the density. I do not know if there are chemicals that have a gaseous phase under pressure that is denser than any sold materials. For example the density of the atmosphere on the surface of venus (92x pressure on earth) is about 6.5% of water. Apparently on venus the pressure is high enough at the surface that CO2 is technically not a gas any more but a super critical fluid.

Once habitable world destroyed by cosmic event in short time:
Not sure what you mean by cosmic catastrophe (the thought experiment? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_catastrophe) , but I would say sudden death by space rock is very real, the dinos were wiped out by one.

 

[GTOM]

Asteroid storm: I would say its possible in the short term, say after a collision of larger bodies, but the density of mass would diffuse into the vacuum of space, I have no idea what the time frames would be.

Habitable storm planet: I think an advanced civilization realizing their planet is about to turn into a storm planet might be able to build underground to evade, but I don't know if it would work if it always had destructive storms, I guess depends on how bad. But the life on this planet would have had to survive without technology in the early stage of evolution on that planet, I think this is less likely as single cell organisms (ie the start of life here) would be a bit more vulnerable to destruction. Basically a chicken and the egg argument, if you need to build underground to survive, how did you evolve to be able to do that in the first place?

Floating rocks: Buoyancy is simply a ratio of densities (as long as there is some acceleration acting on them), if you have a gas dense enough rocks will float. The highest density gas we have (according to google at room temp and 1atm) is Tungsten hexaflouride, this has a density of 12.4g/l, or 0.0124g/cc, but this is still one order of magnitude lower density than water ice (~0.92g/cc). So the atmosphere would have to be much higher pressure to increase the density. I do not know if there are chemicals that have a gaseous phase under pressure that is denser than any sold materials. For example the density of the atmosphere on the surface of venus (92x pressure on earth) is about 6.5% of water. Apparently on venus the pressure is high enough at the surface that CO2 is technically not a gas any more but a super critical fluid.

Once habitable world destroyed by cosmic event in short time:
Not sure what you mean by cosmic catastrophe (the thought experiment? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_catastrophe) , but I would say sudden death by space rock is very real, the dinos were wiped out by one.

Asteroid hit isn't bad, but i thought about something even worse that can't be stopped by a civilization that can build generation ships.

 

[essenmein]

If the systems star exploded that would be fairly quick I would expect.

"At best, the Earth would take a few days to vaporize. "

https://futurism.com/what-would-happen-if-the-sun-went-supernova-2