Post by rvm45 on Jun 21, 2015 1:05:52 GMT -6
This is a mishmash of stuff from educational videos and my own extrapolations.
One of the more common planets that they're finding in other solar systems are Water Planets. They have 2 or 3 times the Earth's mass…
But because they are so much less dense than Earth, they would have far more than 3 times the surface area.
A planet's surface gravity is determined by two things:
A.} The mass of the planet;
AND,
B.} The distance from the center of gravity.
If I remember correctly, the Moon has about 4% of the Earth's mass—that would seem to give it 4% of the Earth's surface gravity—but wait…
The Moon is such a tiny ball that it's center of gravity is much closer to its surface than Earth's. In fact, lunar surface gravity is about 18% of Earth's.
I don't know exactly, but a Water ball with roughly 3 times the Earth's mass might have 10 times the Earth's surface area and still only have roughly 1 gee surface gravity.
Okay, heavier stuff will fall into the world occasionally—so somewhere beneath more than two or three thousand miles of Water, there might be a small Metal core perhaps even with a small rocky mantle on top of that…
Maybe the size of our Moon…maybe as big as Mercury? I have no idea.
Okay, when you put Water under enough pressure—ungodly pressure—you get Ice 7 and if I remember right, Ice 7 is a metal. Its denser than Liquid Water so it doesn't float.
Atmosphere? Yeah, if nothing else, ultraviolet in the high atmosphere will break some Water molecules into Oxygen and Hydrogen and the Hydrogen will be far more likely to escape the atmosphere into space.
Figuring out where the Nitrogen and enough Carbon to give the atmosphere enough CO2 is a bit more problematic.
Never mind. Our atmosphere supports life with a fraction of 1% CO2.
Our oceans will be salty—not just with NaCl, but with all sorts of Metals and metallic salts.
Small meteorites that "Burn Up" or are reduced to powder will likely dissolve.
EE…
I've seen pictures or at least artist's conceptions of baseball and softball sized lumps of pure Manganese lying on the bed of the ocean miles beneath the surface. Under enough pressure minerals and salts tend to precipitate out of solution.
I don't know why only Manganese nodules form. Maybe the sea is very rich in Manganese or maybe it tends to precipitate out first for some reason.
If your Sea Water gets deep enough minerals that life might desperately need, will tend to precipitate out of solution. I can't think of any reasonably probable Bio-Geo-Chemical Cycle to get those minerals back to the surface once more.
Never mind.
Presumably the ocean might support plant and animal life.
IF some future explorers could get enough floating hardware down onto the planet's liquid surface, ships and large floating platforms could be built and men could live there. It would be one Hell of a bootstrapping maneuver to get that first large platform built.
{I assume that the sea was liberally sown with algae, floating sea weed, etc…fish, jellyfish, crabs, lobsters—whatever.}
Some Plastics are very long lasting and noticeably stronger than Steel on a pound for pound basis.
Wood is a naturally occurring Polycarbonate—i.e."Plastic". Wood—while adequate for trees—is nowhere near as strong and weather resistant as some man-made Plastics.
IF man can get to a water planet in force, presumably he can create biological organisms to order.
Imagine a plant that floats in the sea drinking Sea Water. As it grows it turns readily available materials—mostly Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen and Carbon into a very high strength biologically produced Plastic. Lets further suppose that it grows hollow air filled limbs reminiscent of bamboo.
The limbs tend to grow into fairly large hexagons—O, say 20-30 feet on a side. The hexagons tend to be tied together with high strength "vines" and braced with cross-spars with the ability to improvise a bit where measurements and angles aren't completely uniform.
You'd need to have leaf-bearing parts of the plant rise above the surface to gather sunlight. With all the Sea Water available roots can be very vestigial.
Okay, the "Sea Bamboo" provides the foundation and the support. Any number of other plants contrive to lay the joists and to become the "Floor" proper. Once you have a halfway solid basketwork, leaves, decaying trunks—whatever—will tend to get trapped, decompose and wield "Soil". Nitrogen, Oxygen, Hydrogen and Carbon will comprise the bulk of the Peat Moss like soil. Silicone to serve as a matrix may be hard come-by, {Silicon Dioxide—Quartz—is a major portion of most soil, sand or whatever.}
You might have a bit of coral or barnacles attach to the bottomed of the structure. Both coral and barnacles seem able to strain Calcium from sea water and some of the world's white beaches are composed of finely ground coral—CaCO3.
Soil craving plants, symbiotic animals—whether intentionally symbiotic by accident or design—and human gardeners might facilitate transferring coral, oyster shells, fish bones, etc onto the topside and might speed up the crushing process as well.
One hexagon is a very flimsy and makeshift structure—but they can join together. Actually they tend to grow together that way.
Two floating islands that end up in contact might end up merging—particularly if there were people wanting more territory on one of the halves. On the other hand, the may split into two or more parts during a severe storm.
How big can an island get? Lets say that about the same size as Rhode Island—that's 1000 square miles. A square with 1000 square miles would be about 32 miles on a side. Islands are more likelt to be highly irregular in shape.
Alright—once we've rationalized these islands—birds, bats and flying insects would be some of the creatures that could most easily colonize the islands.
What do you need to get BIG old flying birds?
Light gravity, heavy air and high percentage of Oxygen.
We're stuck with a gravity that is more or less Earth-like. Higher density air is more buoyant and a high percentage of Oxygen supercharges the metabolism. Lets specify that our planet has thick air with lots of Oxygen.
{IF our scientists are crackerjack gene-spinners, we might also make some improvements to the skeleton and/or metabolism of our flying fauna.}
I don't know if there are any amphibians that can live in Salt Water…
Also, if our ecology has any whales, dolphins, sea lions, sea-going iguanas, sea turtles, penguins, etc—a lungful of air that is both dense and with a high percentage of Oxygen will let them dive longer and deeper before they need to come up for air.
We might be able to have chicken and turkey-like birds weighing 70-80 pounds or more and able to fly long distances between islands.
I also like the idea of penguin-like Water birds adapted to warmer climates.
{Don't forget that much seeding is done by birds that eat "here" and then crap "there".}
A good moon seems necessary to churn up the Sea Water. That means tides—but with no beaches, who'd notice? {Any beaches on the islands would rise and fall with the current.}
Another thing, presumably with no continental masses to serve a speed bumps, waves could get very high indeed. Still, with no shallow Water to cause the waves to break that mainly means that boats and floating islands would be on a big roller-coaster…
If you have a big man-made platform you can get minerals by applying electric current to Sea Water—but its a PIA. More likely they'd mine moons or asteroids and send the Metal down. If any asteroids were towed into orbit, leftover low grade ores in small pieces might rain down continuously to enrich the sea's mineral content.
People on the artificial islands could navigate via radio. Folks who got out of sight of a natural island and who didn't have two-way radio might spend years looking for home. They might never find home again.
Who lives on natural islands?
A.} Radio equipped dudes from a Metal island who are harvesting some sort of crop and only there short term.
B.} Recalcitrant folks as well as "back to nature" folks.
C.} Folks exiled from the civilized Metal islands.
D.} Survivors of their Metal island sinking or some sort of planet-wide apocalypse.
Islanders—I picture them part Hillbilly and part Polynesian with just a dash of Gypsy and Hippie thrown in.
….,.RVM45
One of the more common planets that they're finding in other solar systems are Water Planets. They have 2 or 3 times the Earth's mass…
But because they are so much less dense than Earth, they would have far more than 3 times the surface area.
A planet's surface gravity is determined by two things:
A.} The mass of the planet;
AND,
B.} The distance from the center of gravity.
If I remember correctly, the Moon has about 4% of the Earth's mass—that would seem to give it 4% of the Earth's surface gravity—but wait…
The Moon is such a tiny ball that it's center of gravity is much closer to its surface than Earth's. In fact, lunar surface gravity is about 18% of Earth's.
I don't know exactly, but a Water ball with roughly 3 times the Earth's mass might have 10 times the Earth's surface area and still only have roughly 1 gee surface gravity.
Okay, heavier stuff will fall into the world occasionally—so somewhere beneath more than two or three thousand miles of Water, there might be a small Metal core perhaps even with a small rocky mantle on top of that…
Maybe the size of our Moon…maybe as big as Mercury? I have no idea.
Okay, when you put Water under enough pressure—ungodly pressure—you get Ice 7 and if I remember right, Ice 7 is a metal. Its denser than Liquid Water so it doesn't float.
Atmosphere? Yeah, if nothing else, ultraviolet in the high atmosphere will break some Water molecules into Oxygen and Hydrogen and the Hydrogen will be far more likely to escape the atmosphere into space.
Figuring out where the Nitrogen and enough Carbon to give the atmosphere enough CO2 is a bit more problematic.
Never mind. Our atmosphere supports life with a fraction of 1% CO2.
Our oceans will be salty—not just with NaCl, but with all sorts of Metals and metallic salts.
Small meteorites that "Burn Up" or are reduced to powder will likely dissolve.
EE…
I've seen pictures or at least artist's conceptions of baseball and softball sized lumps of pure Manganese lying on the bed of the ocean miles beneath the surface. Under enough pressure minerals and salts tend to precipitate out of solution.
I don't know why only Manganese nodules form. Maybe the sea is very rich in Manganese or maybe it tends to precipitate out first for some reason.
If your Sea Water gets deep enough minerals that life might desperately need, will tend to precipitate out of solution. I can't think of any reasonably probable Bio-Geo-Chemical Cycle to get those minerals back to the surface once more.
Never mind.
Presumably the ocean might support plant and animal life.
IF some future explorers could get enough floating hardware down onto the planet's liquid surface, ships and large floating platforms could be built and men could live there. It would be one Hell of a bootstrapping maneuver to get that first large platform built.
{I assume that the sea was liberally sown with algae, floating sea weed, etc…fish, jellyfish, crabs, lobsters—whatever.}
Some Plastics are very long lasting and noticeably stronger than Steel on a pound for pound basis.
Wood is a naturally occurring Polycarbonate—i.e."Plastic". Wood—while adequate for trees—is nowhere near as strong and weather resistant as some man-made Plastics.
IF man can get to a water planet in force, presumably he can create biological organisms to order.
Imagine a plant that floats in the sea drinking Sea Water. As it grows it turns readily available materials—mostly Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen and Carbon into a very high strength biologically produced Plastic. Lets further suppose that it grows hollow air filled limbs reminiscent of bamboo.
The limbs tend to grow into fairly large hexagons—O, say 20-30 feet on a side. The hexagons tend to be tied together with high strength "vines" and braced with cross-spars with the ability to improvise a bit where measurements and angles aren't completely uniform.
You'd need to have leaf-bearing parts of the plant rise above the surface to gather sunlight. With all the Sea Water available roots can be very vestigial.
Okay, the "Sea Bamboo" provides the foundation and the support. Any number of other plants contrive to lay the joists and to become the "Floor" proper. Once you have a halfway solid basketwork, leaves, decaying trunks—whatever—will tend to get trapped, decompose and wield "Soil". Nitrogen, Oxygen, Hydrogen and Carbon will comprise the bulk of the Peat Moss like soil. Silicone to serve as a matrix may be hard come-by, {Silicon Dioxide—Quartz—is a major portion of most soil, sand or whatever.}
You might have a bit of coral or barnacles attach to the bottomed of the structure. Both coral and barnacles seem able to strain Calcium from sea water and some of the world's white beaches are composed of finely ground coral—CaCO3.
Soil craving plants, symbiotic animals—whether intentionally symbiotic by accident or design—and human gardeners might facilitate transferring coral, oyster shells, fish bones, etc onto the topside and might speed up the crushing process as well.
One hexagon is a very flimsy and makeshift structure—but they can join together. Actually they tend to grow together that way.
Two floating islands that end up in contact might end up merging—particularly if there were people wanting more territory on one of the halves. On the other hand, the may split into two or more parts during a severe storm.
How big can an island get? Lets say that about the same size as Rhode Island—that's 1000 square miles. A square with 1000 square miles would be about 32 miles on a side. Islands are more likelt to be highly irregular in shape.
Alright—once we've rationalized these islands—birds, bats and flying insects would be some of the creatures that could most easily colonize the islands.
What do you need to get BIG old flying birds?
Light gravity, heavy air and high percentage of Oxygen.
We're stuck with a gravity that is more or less Earth-like. Higher density air is more buoyant and a high percentage of Oxygen supercharges the metabolism. Lets specify that our planet has thick air with lots of Oxygen.
{IF our scientists are crackerjack gene-spinners, we might also make some improvements to the skeleton and/or metabolism of our flying fauna.}
I don't know if there are any amphibians that can live in Salt Water…
Also, if our ecology has any whales, dolphins, sea lions, sea-going iguanas, sea turtles, penguins, etc—a lungful of air that is both dense and with a high percentage of Oxygen will let them dive longer and deeper before they need to come up for air.
We might be able to have chicken and turkey-like birds weighing 70-80 pounds or more and able to fly long distances between islands.
I also like the idea of penguin-like Water birds adapted to warmer climates.
{Don't forget that much seeding is done by birds that eat "here" and then crap "there".}
A good moon seems necessary to churn up the Sea Water. That means tides—but with no beaches, who'd notice? {Any beaches on the islands would rise and fall with the current.}
Another thing, presumably with no continental masses to serve a speed bumps, waves could get very high indeed. Still, with no shallow Water to cause the waves to break that mainly means that boats and floating islands would be on a big roller-coaster…
If you have a big man-made platform you can get minerals by applying electric current to Sea Water—but its a PIA. More likely they'd mine moons or asteroids and send the Metal down. If any asteroids were towed into orbit, leftover low grade ores in small pieces might rain down continuously to enrich the sea's mineral content.
People on the artificial islands could navigate via radio. Folks who got out of sight of a natural island and who didn't have two-way radio might spend years looking for home. They might never find home again.
Who lives on natural islands?
A.} Radio equipped dudes from a Metal island who are harvesting some sort of crop and only there short term.
B.} Recalcitrant folks as well as "back to nature" folks.
C.} Folks exiled from the civilized Metal islands.
D.} Survivors of their Metal island sinking or some sort of planet-wide apocalypse.
Islanders—I picture them part Hillbilly and part Polynesian with just a dash of Gypsy and Hippie thrown in.
….,.RVM45
