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| Vipneu Comet | |
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| Topic Started: Mar 9 2010, 06:50 AM (403 Views) | |
| KayKay | Mar 9 2010, 06:50 AM Post #1 |
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Adult
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What do you suppose would be the consequence of a planet to be in the tail of a massive comet that is so big its tail engulfs the planet while it is passing? My fictional solar system has a comet just like this and it passes the planet that has life (Earth-like, carbon-based, made up of cells, many organisms respire aerobically, etc). It catches the tail every few thousand years and is in the tail for approximately 3 days each time. How would it affect life, atmosphere, etc? Any ideas? |
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| Practically Uninformed | Mar 9 2010, 07:36 AM Post #2 |
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Informed enough to care
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It would possibly destroy it. The combustion from the comet would no doubt cause a deterioration of the planet's atmosphere. |
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| T.Neo | Mar 9 2010, 07:53 AM Post #3 |
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Translunar injection: TLI
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...combustion? Comet tails and comas are dust and gas erupted from the surface of a comet (which is volatile rich) and swept into a path by the solar wind in the case of the tail of the comet. The material within the coma and tail is not very dense. The coma alone can be larger then the Sun. So if a comet approached that close to a planet, it would be simply awesome, it would fill the whole sky and light up the nightside of a planet. Earth regularly passes through the tails of comets though, btw. This is what causes meteor showers (the meteors are fine cometary debris). We don't pass through the denser regions though, so it isn't particularly spectacular. So the meteor showers would probably be pretty intense. There might be quite a few fragments that travel through the atmosphere and impact the ground, too. The event will probably have effects on the planetary magnetosphere. Both ion and gas tails could interfere, but I don't particularly know how. Perhaps you'd have auroras in the polar regions as well, if ions were accelerated fast enough by the magnetic field to the poles. So I doubt it would negatively effect life, but it would be an awesome event. There should also be some funky orbital mechanics at work to prevent the comet impacting the planet eventually... Edited by T.Neo, Mar 9 2010, 07:57 AM.
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| Temporary | Mar 9 2010, 09:53 AM Post #4 |
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Transhuman
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Maybe it would be like volcanic eruptions? Put new materials out in the open for organisms to use. |
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| KayKay | Mar 9 2010, 03:07 PM Post #5 |
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Adult
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Thanks, good responses. Practically Uninformed: I can see where you were coming from, I too was wondering how abrasive the comet's tail could get, and if it could strip the atmosphere. T.Neo: Pretty interesting, I knew some comet's comas could get bigger than the sun but I never knew we were regularly hit by them (perhaps not quite as big as that or, as you say, as focused as a full-on hit). I am interested in the effects that frequent, strong meteor showers would have on life on that planet (hoping it may be analogous to our Cenozoic, or at the very least post-Carboniferous).... Temporary: .... and also as you say, Temporary, whether it will contribute a significant amount to the planet's atmosphere and matter that could be useful (or on the flip-side, detrimental) to life. I don't know much about orbital mechanics. On Celestia I really haven't been focusing on that because I haven't seen it as important (I understand, it is probably vital but... well this is just fantasy. Hopefully might get some help from less mathematically challenged peeps than myself later. Seriously I wouldn't even know where to begin!). So most of the planets, comets and asteroids have just kind of been plonked anywhere, well, with some consideration, but nothing involving calculations. Just going by eye alone and my brain's admittedly inaccurate in-built physics engine. Any tips or advice for further reading in this area would be appreciated, but if it has calculations I'd probably need a one-on-one tutor! Lol!This comet is just a fantasy comet as I say. It's over a hundred kilometres in diameter, I don't know if they can get that big in real life. Its coma is freaking huge and dwarfs the sun. While its orbital path over-laps the orbital path of our planet with life, it is at such an inclination that it doesn't directly cut the path. No doubt though our planet would influence and be influenced by the comet (which is almost a planetoid) and Celestia unfortunately doesn't take that into account while it's running. You have to program in gravitational effects into the orbit yourself, and I wouldn't know where to start with this. A collision would be very interesting, but also life-ending, so I might want to avoid it. I'm planning that the comet is just a temporary thing, was captured as a planetoid/asteroid (not sure which) by the sun on a temporary basis and is lost again after, say, half a million to a million years of being in orbit. There are some gas giants that could be used as plot devices to upset the orbit. |
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| Iowanic | Mar 9 2010, 04:26 PM Post #6 |
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Adult
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As a bit of a side note: The scifi series "The Dragonriders of Pern" had a similar set-up. Written by Anne Mccaffrey; it had a erratic wandering planet that would at intervals pass close enough to a human-inhabited planet, so that a nasty spore named 'thread' would pass thru space and make life preety rough for the humans there. Didn't earth pass thru Halley's comet tail in 1910? |
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| Canis Lupis | Mar 11 2010, 09:33 PM Post #7 |
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.
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This would have a massive impact on any sapient life to say the least. Just like the rings on Parasky's Priapus Prime. |
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| Ànraich | Mar 13 2010, 12:47 AM Post #8 |
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L'évolution Spéculative est moi
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Nothing happens, it happened to Earth in the 1920's. There was a big craze, some scientists thought the tail contained high amounts of toxins (which it did, but spread out over so vast a distance that it didn't reach the surface in large enough quantities to hurt anything, not even microbes). People were selling gas masks and pills that would help you survive the coming apocalypse. Yea, sorry, doesn't really work. You could try life on a Dyson tree though, that's fun and involves a comet. Big bug-like crawlers evolve to crawl around the dark branches of the inner chamber, where an atmosphere is held in place by branches so tightly woven they're air tight. |
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We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar. "The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming Tree That Owns Itself
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| KayKay | Mar 13 2010, 03:48 AM Post #9 |
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Adult
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Oh, well, I wasn't actually looking for it to do anything, if it won't have any effect then that's fine by me. I was just hoping it wouldn't have too much effect other than looking pretty. |
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| T.Neo | Mar 13 2010, 03:57 AM Post #10 |
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Translunar injection: TLI
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Or Earth's Moon? I could ramble on here about moons of gas giants but I'll leave it at that- even our boring little moon has had quite an effect on culture. |
| A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork. | |
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Hopefully might get some help from less mathematically challenged peeps than myself later. Seriously I wouldn't even know where to begin!). So most of the planets, comets and asteroids have just kind of been plonked anywhere, well, with some consideration, but nothing involving calculations. Just going by eye alone and my brain's admittedly inaccurate in-built physics engine. Any tips or advice for further reading in this area would be appreciated, but if it has calculations I'd probably need a one-on-one tutor! Lol!




9:25 AM Jul 11