I'm bored, so I'll announce my TC.

Raemon

Heh. One of the side benefits on calling the planet Exodus (I didn't realize this till later) is that if you use your imagination a little, "X" is sort of short for "Exodus". Kinda. It amused me anyway, for about 2 seconds.

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orcaloverbri9

Well, 2 seconds is better than .1415897

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seant

Quote

Originally posted by sparky:
**Since everything has mass and therefore gravity, a moon is always pulling on it's planet, just like the planet is pulling on the moon. The thing is, when the masses are so close, the moon doesn't orbit the planet anymore, they orbit each other, and that is no longer a planet/moon relationship, but rather a binary planet system (Use that -- it's cool;) ) So some people say that we have 8 planets in our system, and Pluto is just another asteroid type thing, and others say we have 10 planets in our solar system because Pluto and Charon are both planets. It's all up for debate.
**

That applies to the Earth/Luna binary system as well. Luna is so unusually large for a natural planetary satelite that some argue it should be considered a planet. Also, because of it's size, Luna does not orbit the Earth. The the "main" legrange point between Luna and Earth is ~2/3 of the way between the two, so Luna makes a sort of sine wave movement around the orbital path of Earth.

-STH

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sparky

that doesn't change the fact that the moon is mostly orbiting around earth. Obviously they are technically rotating around eachother, but it isn't enough to pull earth into a significent looping motion.

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Jonathan Boyd

Quote

Originally posted by sparky:
that doesn't change the fact that the moon is mostly orbiting around earth. Obviously they are technically rotating around eachother, but it isn't enough to pull earth into a significent looping motion.

Technically speaking in any two body system, both bodies are orbiting around their common centre of mass, rather than one orbiting around the other. It just so happens that there are a lot of cases where the common centre of mass lies within one of the bodies.

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what_is_the_matrix

Quote

Originally posted by sparky:
**that doesn't change the fact that the moon is mostly orbiting around earth. Obviously they are technically rotating around eachother, but it isn't enough to pull earth into a significent looping motion.

**

exactly true, and he failed to take into account the fact that Jupiter and Saturn have large moons as well, and that the Moon is only the fifth largest moon in the Solar System. While the Moon's diameter at 3,476 km is almost 1/3 the diameter of Earth, Ganymede (around Jupiter) is larger at 5,260 km in diameter. Titan (around Saturn) is the second largest moon in the solar system at 5,150 km, Callisto (around Jupiter) follows at 4,800 km in diameter, Io is 3,630 km in diameter, and Europa is 3,138 km in diameter.

Matrix

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Dastal

So, considering that by the time of EV, Human have discovered FTL travel, to the tune of over c x 10^4, you'd think that sufficient time would have passed for spacedust to collect into a new planet.

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Jonathan Boyd

Quote

Originally posted by Dastal:
So, considering that by the time of EV, Human have discovered FTL travel, to the tune of over c x 10^4, you'd think that sufficient time would have passed for spacedust to collect into a new planet.

Any such space dust would have already collected into planets. If there isn't a planet out there now, there won't be in the future. Planet formation isn't something that just keeps happening.

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Raemon

Actually, the humans don't have FTL travel, so whether or not space dust could collect is a moot point. They have subwarp travel, which gets you from one asteroid/planet to another within one system over the course of a day (the journey passes instantaneously for those in transit). This is still fast, considering that such a trip right now would take several months.

And the planet has existed for several million years at least, seeing as that's how long the alien civilization there has been abandoned.

As if logic like this really matters.

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mrxak

I'd just like to point out that most of our solar system is still uncharted. We found Quaoar (a small planetoid in the Kuiper Belt) very recently, for instance. Although it is true that it would be very difficult to see any new planets from Earth because of their necessary distance from the nearest big light source (the Sun), it is still possible to detect objects by looking at gravitational interactions with other objects, and we could theoretically run across them in our future exploration.

Besides, who says it can't be a rogue planet caught by the Sun's gravitational field and pulled into orbit? Or a near-miss with another system?

Most of what happens in EV games is science fiction anyway, so what's the big deal? If it has a good story, people will like it.

Starbridge42

On the subject of tenth planets:

A while ago I found this rather interesting story about the formation of the moon.

Originally there WERE ten planets (lets assume that Pluto is a planet and Charon is a moon), it was abit smaller then Venus is now and had a rather erratic orbit.
It gradually edged closer, and closer to Earth's orbit until the two finally collided. The two planets were so superheated that both melted, forming into great globules of molten rock and metal. The blobs of metal split into two parts, one larger, one smaller. The two began to cool in the frozen wastes of space (well obviously!) and formed two celestial bodies; Earth and Luna.

Its only a theory but it does account for the reason that there are rocks on the moon the same age as on Earth and others that are much, much older.

Anyways, I just thought you might find it intersting.

-Starbridge42

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Gus

Hahaha, the tenth planet is Persephone, did you not know that?

Heh. Just kidding.

I think your idea is very good.

I want to see that TC ready

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