General Offer of Expertise

[BlackChakram]

Hi everyone. I've got a degree in astrophysics that I rarely get to use. That being said, if anyone is working on a map with realistic elements and could use some spot expertise (where to place gas giants around stars, how common black holes are, etc etc), I'm more than happy to offer my services.

I'm hoping this is an acceptable place to post this. If not, my apologies. Just wanting to be helpful. I'll gladly relocate or remove the thread if necessary!

[Naima]

Hello and welcome ... This thread might interest you ...

http://www.cartographersguild.com/ge...s-realism.html

[BlackChakram]

Ah thank you. I figured there was a thread like this somewhere. Just couldn't find it.

If there's a thread for larger scale things, I can tackle those, too!

[Domino44]

I have said this before and I am going to say it again, I love star maps. I have done a few, but mine have been less realistic and more aesthetic. The next time I have a hankering to design a star map I hope that you will be able to give me some pointers! I did study astronomy but it was more about the myths and legends concerning differing constellations, stars, clusters...etc. So my knowledge of the actual science regarding stars is a bit limited. Thanks for offering your insight!

[BlackChakram]

My pleasure! One of the things I love most about astronomy is that truth is way stranger than fiction!

[s0meguy]

My pleasure! One of the things I love most about astronomy is that truth is way stranger than fiction!

Can you give some examples of this? Really strange but plausible situations would be fun to play with.

Another question: are "wormholes" or basically portals that human space ships could travel through to go to another far off part of space (like another galaxy) even remotely possible?

[BlackChakram]

Can you give some examples of this? Really strange but plausible situations would be fun to play with.

Another question: are "wormholes" or basically portals that human space ships could travel through to go to another far off part of space (like another galaxy) even remotely possible?

So the wormhole thing IS actually plausible, but definitely not doable. The problem is that the size of a wormhole in a black hole is ridiculously small. Like "black hole at the center of the galaxy would make a wormhole only a few nanometers in diameter" kind of thing. Easily good enough to send a tight-beam transmission, but likely not matter. Where they link is totally hypothetical, but I've heard everything from other wormholes to new universes. Whatever you want to do with them has probably been theorized.

As for examples of the truth being stranger than fiction, about half the things on this list are crazy weird.
Wikipedia List of Planet Types

[s0meguy]

So the wormhole thing IS actually plausible, but definitely not doable. The problem is that the size of a wormhole in a black hole is ridiculously small. Like "black hole at the center of the galaxy would make a wormhole only a few nanometers in diameter" kind of thing. Easily good enough to send a tight-beam transmission, but likely not matter. Where they link is totally hypothetical, but I've heard everything from other wormholes to new universes. Whatever you want to do with them has probably been theorized.

As for examples of the truth being stranger than fiction, about half the things on this list are crazy weird.
Wikipedia List of Planet Types

Thanks. Are there good reasons to assume that the creation of such artificial wormholes/portals that connect one part of space to another is physically impossible, no matter how advanced and beyond our understanding the technology used to create them is?

I wonder about the nature of the "electric planet" that is mentioned on that page, but there is no article for it, and I can't find anything about it either.

What could a "Chthonian planet" look like? (A gas giant stripped of gas, leaving only it's core) From my limited understanding, it would basically be a huge terrestial planet, possibly with a remnant of the gas giant's atmosphere, still having an atmospheric density multiple times that of Earth. I suppose it would be difficult for such a planet to support life, also because to become a Chthonian planet in the first place, it would have to be close enough to a star for it to strip away its atmosphere. From what I have read, the composition of gas giant cores is unknown, and is only speculated. What would be some strange properties that such a planet could have, especially ones that would influence life on it?

[BlackChakram]

Thanks. Are there good reasons to assume that the creation of such artificial wormholes/portals that connect one part of space to another is physically impossible, no matter how advanced and beyond our understanding the technology used to create them is?

Eh. The beauty of science fiction is that you can invent such technologies. But no, as of present, we have nothing. I suppose you'd need something to create antigravity, which isn't impossible according to the equations.

I wonder about the nature of the "electric planet" that is mentioned on that page, but there is no article for it, and I can't find anything about it either.

A lot of the exoplanetology is so new that you have to take it with a grain of salt. It' a lot of hypothetical extraction from limited data. I haven't heard of that particular one, either, honestly.

What could a "Chthonian planet" look like? (A gas giant stripped of gas, leaving only it's core) From my limited understanding, it would basically be a huge terrestial planet, possibly with a remnant of the gas giant's atmosphere, still having an atmospheric density multiple times that of Earth. I suppose it would be difficult for such a planet to support life, also because to become a Chthonian planet in the first place, it would have to be close enough to a star for it to strip away its atmosphere. From what I have read, the composition of gas giant cores is unknown, and is only speculated. What would be some strange properties that such a planet could have, especially ones that would influence life on it?

Your ideas on the Chthonians sound about right to me. We know that the hydrogen deeeeeeep in Jupiter start acting more like a liquid metal than a gas. I suppose that would all change once that atmosphere boils away, but I'd like to think that that could have SOME cool sci-fi like effect. Maybe a highly magnetized surface? I would also guess life would have to evolve to tolerate extreme heat, winds, and pressure changes. Maybe they'd only live underground. That surface sounds pretty harsh.

[sozme]

I would definitely love to get your help...

I'm in the outlining stages of a work of fiction (really, a series of works), and I'm stuck on the finer details of where in the galaxy I should put my alien worlds. I'm really looking to have this level of detail down in an image file before I really start writing: http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/i/20...rt-d5u3tvb.png (just as an example of what I'm going for). I

I have the names and a lot of the details of the characters, plot, etc. (I've been working on outlining this story for years now). Now I'm to the part I've been avoiding so far - the actual science and actual mapping of the galaxy I'm creating and the individual worlds in which the story will take place. I already have names for pretty much everything.

What I really wish I had was a template to start with, but I cannot find any that I think are suitable mainly because if I place a homeworld in some place, I begin to wonder what the actual constellation is called, what the star is (if it actually has a name i.e. 85 Pegasi), whether it's an appropriate location or absolutely preposterous. Basically I envision my story coming with a map of the detail I've given as an example above, but I don't want amateur cosmologists seeing it and saying to themselves, "Wow, that seems completely ridiculous."

I am a physiologist by training, so I have a great deal of the alien stuff already imagined in well enough detail to not sound like a complete idiot, but the only physics I took was in my undergraduate pre-med classes.