Planet Generation

[simply Nathan]

Or maybe the creatures all just have really, really high levels of Temperature Tolerance?

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by Brett

One thing that I am pretty sure of is that Space makes "eccentric gas giant" and "episolar gas giant" systems far more common than they are in reality. I understand that it has been established from surveys of nearby stars that no more than 3–6% have detectable (ie. epistellar or eccentric) gas giant planets. If you modify the "Gas Giant Arrangement Table" on p. 107 to

Roll (3d6) g Arrangement
5 or less gapp no gas giant
6 – 15 gapppp conventional gas giant
16 gapgapgap eccentric gas giant
17 – 18 gappp epistellar gas giant

your results will be more realistic...

Do you have a source for this--not the Table itself, but the info that allowed you to come up with the table?

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

Do you have a source for this--not the Table itself, but the info that allowed you to come up with the table?

I checked the figure in Cole & Woolfson Planetary Science, but in my opinion Cole and Woolfson misrepresent the original result. They cite 3–6% as the proportion of stars that have planets, I distinctly remember that the original result was that 3–6% of stars have planets detectable by then-current techniques, i.e. epistellar and eccentric gas giants. You can easily find evidence that more than 6% of stars have planets, eg. http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0004-637X/598/2/1350/.

I'm having trouble tracking down the original result (can't come up with a sufficiently specific search). I think I saw it reported in Space Daily.

[Agemegos]

Here is a cite for the incidence of 'hot jupiters' ("epistellar gas giants", as GURPS Space calls them) being 1%–1.4% : http://ptp.ipap.jp/link?PTPS/158/24