07-13-2020, 12:47 AM | #1741 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
During the year 2051, astronomers detected a brown dwarf heading on an intercepting trajectory with the Sol System. An intergalactic object, it was traveling at 0.1c, so it was thought to have been ejected from its home galaxy by a supermassive black hole. By 2094, astronomers discovered that the brown dwarf would impact Sol in 2157, causing sufficient compression to trigger a supernova.
With the sure knowledge of the destruction of the Sol System in little more than 60 years, the nations of the Sol System poured vast amounts of resources unto FTL research, the equivalent of 1% of system GDP (over $5 trillion per year). Within 10 years, the first FTL drives were developed. With 20 years, the first interstellar colonies were established. While there were no habutable worlds eithin 50 ly, there were no alien civilizations, and half of the star systems possessed worlds that could be terraformed. By 2154, the Sol System was abandoned except for a few million diehards who refused to leave. It is now 50 years after the destruction of the Sol System, and humanity is distributed among the 1400 star systems within 50 ly if Sol. Since no colony could support every species, there is a substantial trade in biological lifeforms, especially in the 140 systems where terrafirming projects are ongoing. While it will be a 1,000 years before any world is habitable, there is hope among humanity that they might yet survive. |
07-13-2020, 05:34 AM | #1742 | |
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Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
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A brown dwarf is in effect a huge Jupiter like object and would add to the mass of Sol without either it or Sol going supernova. It may not even hit Sol as there as Nemesis (the Sol system's own hypothetical brown dwarf)
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07-13-2020, 06:10 AM | #1743 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Meifumado
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Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
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And 0.1c means it's carrying a lot of kinetic energy. I don't know if that would cause a supernova, perhaps it might be more like a bullet going through a water balloon. However, I question whether an object travelling that fast would survive being ablated to nothing (or at least its solid core) by the intergalactic medium.
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07-13-2020, 06:22 AM | #1744 | |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
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07-13-2020, 06:29 AM | #1745 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
Error corrected.
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07-13-2020, 12:17 PM | #1746 | |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
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07-14-2020, 06:30 AM | #1747 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
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It's around 8 x 10^7 m in radius, so its cross section is around 8 x 10^16 m^2. Moving at 3 x 10^7 m/s is sweeps a volume around 2.4 x 10^24 m^3/s. The intergalactic medium is about 10^-27 kg/m^3, so it hits about 2.4 grams per second. Hitting at 0.1c 2.4 g/sec imparts about 1.1x10^12 J/sec, or about 13 microwatts per square meter. This is probably a bit more than something in a galaxy gets from surrounding starlight, but it trivial on the scale of what anything in a solar system receives from sunlight. Yeah, steady heating probably doesn't work quite the same as effectively a directional low energy cosmic ray bombardment, particularly in terms of what happens right at the edges of the shadow, but it isn't going to overcome that many orders of magnitude difference.
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07-14-2020, 06:43 AM | #1748 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
In terms of the plot though, I don't know that it matters. It's more than enough to perturb the sun. The exact order and timing of the planets being lethally irradiated, boiled and/or frozen is kind of inconsequential. Sure if its mild enough maybe in a million years something in the Solar System will be habitable again, but that's not of much importance to anybody on Earth.
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07-14-2020, 07:35 AM | #1749 | ||
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Meifumado
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Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
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07-14-2020, 12:36 PM | #1750 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
Try this one...
In 2050 the faeries returned. They turned out to be from a nearby extradimensional space. Flesh and blood like humans but with powers at least partially gained from living over there the place outside. At first, it was exciting happy news, at first. It turns out the Faeries were a lot like the ancient Irish or most other ancient warrior peoples. Violent, imperialistic, slave takers, ethnocentric, and self-righteous. These faeries may be low tech (TL3) but they have a variety of psi powers and the ability to disappear to the Otherside at thousands of constantly shifting points. But humanity is now TL9 (well just barely) so they aren't nearly as vulnerable. Note: The Arabs may speak of Jinni, the Cherokee may speak of the Nunne hi, the Hopi may speak of Kachinas, the Japanese of Kammi, and the West Africans of Mmoetia, but they all names for the same sort of creatures. Basically, a sophisticated late 21st-century world is conflict with warrior tribes folk. The powers of the Faeries balance things out. Both the dynamics of tribal cultures and mental changes caused by living on the Otherside make communication less certain than it seems on the surface.
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