Quote:
Originally Posted by tantric
Remember Rogue Planet - a terrestrial planet passes through the solar system, dislodges Earth and takes its orbit....yeah, no. But the premise got me thinking - what are the real possibilities, astronomically? Say, a superearth iceball with a hot core. Just seems like it'd have campaign possibilities.
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If you want to stir up some scientific interest in the THS2100 world, let a comet come sliding into the Solar System on a hyperbolic path, at a high rate so it won't be in-System all that long. The point is that it's an object from outside the Solar System, at the very least it could be a McGuffin as the science community will want to observe it and take some samples (esp. if they can track its path back to a particular star, it's a change to get extra-solar sample data for that star system).
If you want to stir things up more, let the expedition discover alien tech or ruins or Whatever on the comet. It's a perfect temporary window of opportunity because the thing is going to swing around the Sun and fly back out into interstellar space again in short order.
If you want to stir things up a lot, let the comet be made of antimatter. That'll
really stir up the science community, make the thing easily detectable a long way out to give time to do something about it, and have enormous military and political implications (a chance to lay hands on
tons of antimatter at one cheap stroke).
If you want to gild the lily, let the anticomet still have ruins or aliens or whatever made out of antimatter.