System similar to Sol?

[krusty23]

I'm currently out exploring somewhere approximately halfway between Sol and Colonia (well my alt is).
And wondered if anyone has discovered a system that's a facsimile to Sol? That's the Sol that's the one with us in 2023 not the 'modified' one in 3309.

It doesn't even have to be identical, so doesn't have to be a K type star, just a system with four rocky bodies, the third one from the star an earthlike and four Gas giants one with major rings?

Just wondered if Stellar forge actually would generate this sort of system, I'm sure it has somewhere.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

It doesn't even have to be identical, so doesn't have to be a K type star, just a system with four rocky bodies

G type you heathen!

 

[krusty23]

G type you heathen!

Whoops
I was kind of inferring that a k type would be more interesting

 

[Northpin]

And wondered if anyone has discovered a system that's a facsimile to Sol? That's the Sol that's the one with us in 2023 not the 'modified' one in 3309.

Well, IMO, Sol seems to me quite particular
I havent done much exploration but i dont remember seeing any G/K single star system having bodies as far as 20,000+ LS

Sol is a really huge single star system

 

[Sapyx]

It has been discussed before. You can find some discussion in this old thread: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/does-sol-have-a-twin.572609/

In short, it tends to be unlikely, mainly because the Stellar Forge doesn't like making star systems with "mis-matched" planets - mixtures of rockys and gas giants, like Sol is. Most star systems, if they have planets, tend to have a string of very-similar-sized planets of much the same size and category. So, the commonest star system arrangements are things like a string of HMCs, or a string of iceballs, or a string of gas giants.

For the clickophobic, the above thread includes a breakdown I worked out back in 2021. Out of 3453 procedurally-generated Earth-like planets selected at random around G-class stars, 285 of them were in position number 3, 42 of those number-3-ELWs had a moon (and no rings), and only 3 out of those 42 Earth-twin candidates had any gas giants in the system at all. Only one out of 3453 star systems had an ELW in position 3 with a moon and more than one gas giant in the star system. This one:

I don't think your chances of finding a Sol-match in other star classes is going to be much higher, simply because that Stellar Forge bias is carried across all star types. Given enough dice-rolls it could still happen though - it's not impossible, just rather improbable. So yes, it probably has happened somewhere in the galaxy, and probably more than once. I took a wild guess that there might be about 40 of them out there somewhere. But if anyone's ever found one, I can't recall anyone ever posting a picture of it.

Back in 1990 when the original Elite sequel (FE2) came out, Sol system was the only known real-life planetary system - no exoplanets had yet been discovered. So with nothing but the Cosmological Principle to work with, FD logically assumed that Sol was a "typical" star system, and designed the FE2 forge to generate star systems that more or less looked like ours. So the FE2 universe was filled with Sol-lookalike star systems and finding an "exact match for Sol" wasn't that hard. But we've since discovered thousands of exoplanets and dozens of planetary systems, and very very few of them seem to look like ours. Most are strings of similar-sized planets. Which is why the ED Stellar Forge was programmed to spit out non-Sol-like star systems like it does.

It's too early to say whether or not the ED model of the universe is actually accurate, but the data seems to be pointing towards Sol-like star systems actually being rather uncommon.

 

[krusty23]

It has been discussed before. You can find some discussion in this old thread: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/does-sol-have-a-twin.572609/

In short, it tends to be unlikely, mainly because the Stellar Forge doesn't like making star systems with "mis-matched" planets - mixtures of rockys and gas giants, like Sol is. Most star systems, if they have planets, tend to have a string of very-similar-sized planets of much the same size and category. So, the commonest star system arrangements are things like a string of HMCs, or a string of iceballs, or a string of gas giants.

For the clickophobic, the above thread includes a breakdown I worked out back in 2021. Out of 3453 procedurally-generated Earth-like planets selected at random around G-class stars, 285 of them were in position number 3, 42 of those number-3-ELWs had a moon (and no rings), and only 3 out of those 42 Earth-twin candidates had any gas giants in the system at all. Only one out of 3453 star systems had an ELW in position 3 with a moon and more than one gas giant in the star system. This one:

I don't think your chances of finding a Sol-match in other star classes is going to be much higher, simply because that Stellar Forge bias is carried across all star types. Given enough dice-rolls it could still happen though - it's not impossible, just rather improbable. So yes, it probably has happened somewhere in the galaxy, and probably more than once. I took a wild guess that there might be about 40 of them out there somewhere. But if anyone's ever found one, I can't recall anyone ever posting a picture of it.

Back in 1990 when the original Elite sequel (FE2) came out, Sol system was the only known real-life planetary system - no exoplanets had yet been discovered. So with nothing but the Cosmological Principle to work with, FD logically assumed that Sol was a "typical" star system, and designed the FE2 forge to generate star systems that more or less looked like ours. So the FE2 universe was filled with Sol-lookalike star systems and finding an "exact match for Sol" wasn't that hard. But we've since discovered thousands of exoplanets and dozens of planetary systems, and very very few of them seem to look like ours. Most are strings of similar-sized planets. Which is why the ED Stellar Forge was programmed to spit out non-Sol-like star systems like it does.

It's too early to say whether or not the ED model of the universe is actually accurate, but the data seems to be pointing towards Sol-like star systems actually being rather uncommon.

Thanks for such an excellent answer.
I would like to visit this system, but won't be for a while as one account is 22k lys away from it and the other is 14k lys away.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

There is a "Sol-like" system pattern out there:
- inner asteroid belt
- some HMCs (which could in theory be WWs or ELWs with enough luck)
- outer asteroid belt
- some gas giants with moons
- lone ice ball on the end

It only rarely generates the four inner HMCs that would be needed - two or three is much more common - and of course substituting one for an ELW would always be unlikely, but the basic shape is relatively common.

 

[DjVortex]

Coincidentally, I have been for some time wondering (and keeping an eye out for) if there's a (landable) planet that's as close to Earth as possible. Not in how it looks, but in its characteristics: As close as possible to 1 Earth mass, 6371 km radius, 1g, 1 AU distance from the star and, preferrably, with an atmosphere as thick as possible (for a landable planet). If it's a rocky planet, that's a bonus, although not completely necessary.

 

[Sapyx]

There's old threads about that, too, though they do tend to focus specificlaly on Earth-like planets being ma match (or otherwise) for Earth.

Again, Stellar Forge gets in the way of creating an "Earth twin". In two ways: HMC generators never get as high as the 70% rock that they have manually programmed in for Earth itself - meaning that every planet the same size as Earth will always have more metal than Earth does, and therefore have more mass, be more dense, and therefore be both smaller and have higher gravity.

But even aside from that (and assuming that "radius" is therefore not an essential matching characteristic of your Earth-twin), Stellar Forge has some odd generation regarding Earth-likes. I've studied this in some depth, as "finding a perfect match for Earth" has been a goal of mine.

There are basically three different sub-classes of Earth-likes, which can be seen in the three "lobes" on this graph, which is a plot of the surface gravity and atmospheric pressure of tens of thousands of ELWs. You've got "Group 1" (small, low-pressure), Group 2 (medium-sized, high-pressure) and Group 3 (large, low-pressure).

The main thing to note, in regard to finding a "perfect match for Earth", is the general dearth of planets around the 1:1 point on the graph - that point falls outside of all three Groups. Or in other words, most planets with Earth's atmospheric pressure are considerably smaller and lighter, and most planets the same size/mass as Earth have significantly thicker atmospheres.

If you throw in all the other paramters that need to match - things like surface temperature, rotation period, and the presence of a moon - then the probability of generating one planet that hits all the targets becomes vanishingly small.

 

[DjVortex]

I would say that for an "Earth twin" the most important parameters are radius and gravity, then secondarily distance from the star, then thirdly day and year length, and only fourthly atmospheric pressure. And landability would be a huge bonus.