The classic sci-fi series Firefly takes place in a 5-star system called the Verse. Unfortunately, the Verse as it was originally envisioned is unstable. Let’s re-imagine the Verse — or actually, four different “Better Verses” that are stable and include all of the elements that made Firefly such a great show.
Time for an astro-thought experiment. You belong to a super-advanced civilization with the ability to shape the cosmos as you wish. You can move around black holes, stars, planets, comets and moons (like the builders of the ultimate planetary systems). What would your civilization plan for big celebrations? What are their ‘fireworks’? What astronomical phenomena…
The time capsule must serve as a beacon. Any other civilization that detects it should immediately suspect that it is of artificial origin. And it needs to survive for countless billions of years.
This post starts off with some world-building, jumps into eclipses and moons’ orbits, and finishes with a brand new Kalgash system that Isaac Asimov would be proud of (dropped into darkness every 2000 years!). More than one planet can share the same orbit around a star. This is not big news: the concept of Trojan…
This post is an adventure in world-building. I use N-body simulations to find orbital configurations of planetary systems that (I think) are completely new, pretty awesome and unexpected. It involves cohorts of co-orbital planets…
A while back I wrote a series of posts called How planets die. It was about all the ways planets can be sterilized or destroyed. I even made a “planetary death scale”. Gruesome stuff. Let’s liven things up with a new mini-series on Second-Chance Planets. These are planets that get a second chance at life. …
One star. Two planets share an orbit, with one following a horseshoe-shaped path around the other. Boom!
Welcome to what might very well be the culmination of the Building the Ultimate Solar System series. Teaser: the system built in this post could also be called the Ultimate Engineered Black Hole Eyeball Ringworld Solar System (if you’re really not into the whole brevity thing). Our Solar System has one habitable planet. A few…
What happens when the central body in a planetary system is replaced with a million-Sun black hole?
Planets are kind of my thing. But black holes are awesome too. I mean, they can just suck you right in… (I will never apologize for my bad jokes!) I want to bring black holes and planets together. In this post, I’ll first introduce black holes. Then we’ll build the Black Hole Solar System. In…
Let’s find out what it takes to build a system in which a planet remains in perpetual daylight, except for once every few thousand years….
Isaac Asimov‘s sci-fi stories are one reason I wanted to become an astronomer (I talked about this in a recent interview). So I’m a little sad to shoot down a classic…. Nightfall is a classic Asimov story (and later, novel). The residents of a planet called Kalgash live in system of six stars that leaves…
I always thought that only 2 or 3 planets could share the same orbit. I was wrong. And it changes everything (for a super-advanced civilization, anyway).
I stumbled upon a simple way to tighten up the Ultimate Solar System. And by stumbled upon, I mean I discovered that someone else had figured it out. And I took it.
Trojan planets are the best! I am a big fan. I love the idea of two planets sharing the same orbit around a star. To me, it’s where physics meets magic. (Remember, we’re talking planets not condoms! See here for a little refresher, and here for another article about Trojans). As a planet orbits a…
What happens when good planetary systems go bad….
Let’s keep building the ultimate Solar System. In Part 1 we chose our star. In Part 2 we chose our planets. In Part 3 we chose our planets’ orbit. In Part 4 we learned two ninja moves about orbits. In Part 5 we put the pieces together. In this post we will take the Ultimate…
Two days ago we built a planetary system with an Earth that has five Suns in the sky. It looks like this: Yesterday we explored the motions of the heavens on this 5-Sun Earth: how the Suns move across the sky and when night falls (not too often, it turns out). Today we are going…
In yesterday’s post we built a planetary system with an Earth that has five Suns in the sky. Here is what it looks like: Today we are going to pretend that we are inhabitants of this five-Sun Earth and look up at the sky. How do the Suns move across the sky? And, with all…
We Earthlings have just one Sun. Tatooine has two. Wouldn’t it be even cooler with three Suns in the sky? Or four or five or twenty? Several extra-solar planets have been found in triple- and even quadruple-star systems (for example, GJ 667C and PH1b). But none of these planets has more than two Suns because…
A desert world with two suns in the sky. The jungle-covered moon of a gas giant planet. A planet completely enveloped in ice. A stormy ocean-covered world. A planet infested with bubbling lava fields. These are the settings for science fiction stories. They paint pictures of other worlds. Where life can exist but things are…
We are building the ultimate Solar System. In Part 1 we chose the right star. In Part 2 we chose the right planets. In Part 3 we chose the right orbits for the planets. In Part 4 we learned two ninja moves about how more than one planet/moon can share the same orbit. Today’s…
We are building the ultimate Solar System. In Part 1 we chose the right star. In Part 2 we chose the right planets. In Part 3 we chose the right orbits for the planets. Today’s job: Discovering two ninja moves that will allow us to pack way more worlds in the habitable zone. The…
We are building the ultimate Solar System. In Part 1 we chose the right star. In Part 2 we chose the right planets. Today’s job: choosing the right orbits for the planets. Let’s get started. Our goal is simple. We want to pack as many planets into our star’s habitable zone as possible. We…
We are building the ultimate Solar System. In Part 1 we chose the right star. Today’s job: choosing the right planets to put in our ultimate Solar System. Let’s stick to two defining characteristics: a planet’s size (or mass) and its composition. We want Goldilocks-ish planets. They shouldn’t be too small, too big, too…
We are building the ultimate Solar System. Here is an introduction to the game. What kind of star will anchor our ultimate Solar System? It comes down to two choices: stars like the Sun or cooler, redder stars sometimes called “cool stars” or “red dwarfs”. Why not stars bigger than the Sun? Because they…
A while back I performed an experiment called build a better Solar System. The game was to make better use of the Solar System’s habitable real estate. In the game I was required to keep all of the Solar System’s planets (and large moons) and their orbital configurations. Just by switching the orbits of different…
[UPDATE: a new series on building the ultimate Solar System starts here] The Solar System is a disappointment. It does contain an inhabited planet with forests and oceans and frisbees and beer (Earth). But it only has one. There are a couple worlds with some potential, but they are pretty disappointing too. Jupiter’s moons Europa…