WIP - HELP? Pretty please?

[Lingon]

Now, I haven't read the whole thread so maybe I've missed something, but would it not be possible to just make the star hotter, to solve that the heat problem at least?

[Jalyha]

Now, I haven't read the whole thread so maybe I've missed something, but would it not be possible to just make the star hotter, to solve that the heat problem at least?

Yes and no. Okay... highly simplified, so less than 100% accurate, but still understandable, here we go:

A star is basically just gas, held together with gravity. Early in life the star is contracting and is not yet hot enough or dense enough for nuclear reactions. Heat is generated by the contraction (hydrostatic support). Then, for most of its' life, nuclear reactions cause heat and radiation. Toward the end of life, most of the nuclear fuel in the core has been used up. It has a series of inefficient nuclear reactions for heat. After a long time, the reactions no longer generate sufficient heat to support the star against its own gravity, the star will collapse.

So what does that mean? Well... we have gas, energy, gravity, mass, light and heat. The problem is...

The light and heat (which is what we want) is created by the reactions - ENERGY.

You can't *create* energy. All the energy in the universe is already there. What we usually *call* energy is just a reaction, caused by interactions between things which have mass (You'll recognize E=Mc². E is energy. M is Mass.).

What's interacting to cause these reactions is the atoms in the gasses (which have mass). The denser they are, the denser they get, the more efficient reactions, which equals more heat.

Denser stars will also have more MASS.

Which means HOTTER stars will have more mass.



Now the MASS of an object directly influences its' gravitational pull - its' hill sphere. That's how far away an object can be to be pulled into orbit. That gives us everything that can be pulled into orbit around your star/sun... planets, asteroids, etc.

As the mass increases, the energy (reactions) increase, increasing the heat, but also expanding the "hill sphere" and pulling in more objects in a larger radius.

*insert lots of stuff about giant rocks crashing, imploding, exploding, etc...*

Anyway. The larger objects in orbit - PLANETS have a lot of mass.

"Now the MASS of an object directly influences its' gravitational pull - its' hill sphere. That's how far away an object can be to be pulled into orbit."

So other objects - moons, asteroids, satellites, etc... can orbit the planets. The *difference* is that the planet has less mass than the sun/star, and it's within the hill sphere of the sun/star.

So the hill sphere of your planet is influenced by the hill sphere of the sun/star. OR, more accurately, by the mass of the sun/star.

We'll ignore eccentricity for a moment, because it makes for unfavorable orbits. Therefore, the method for calculating the hill sphere of any object IN ORBIT around another object with more MASS (like a planet around a sun) is:

"r" (the radius of the hillsphere) is (approximately) equal to "a" (semi-major axis of the sun) times the CUBE ROOT of ["m" (the mass of the planet/object) divided by 3 times "M" (the mass of the star/more massive object).].



When the Mass of the star changes, so does the hill sphere of everything orbiting it.
If the hill sphere of the planet changes, that affects the moons/subsatellites that can orbit it.

So... hotter sun = more mass = larger/stronger hill sphere = smaller PLANETARY hill sphere = different plausible/im-plausible orbits for the moons = different masses/distances for the moons = different hill spheres for the moons = no sub-moon/different conditions for the sub-moon, etc.

So I'd still have to redo all the calculations.



That being said.... It IS a good solution. I probably will be doing that. In fact I'll probably go in increments... star a little hotter, planet a little closer, back and forth until I can find the sweet spot (or rather, heat spot) that will let my people survive. When I asked how to make it hotter, I was hoping for some atmospheric ideas that would save me from re-calculating. Cause math melts my poor little brain.

I wonder if I could commission an astrophysicist on a forum somewhere....

[Lingon]

snip So... hotter sun = more mass snip

D'oh! Didn't think of that at all And you are clearly far more well-grounded than I here, so But I read the rest of the thread now, and I have to say I really like the look of the map so far, the one with all five continents. Very nice shapes and colors there!