I've seen conflicting statements about this online (imagine that: conflicting information on the Internet!) so I thought I'd ask: are there globular clusters modeled in the game? Having grown up in the southern hemisphere where 47 Tucanae and Omega Centauri are always tantalizingly visible to the naked eye, they would be on my bucket list for Elite.
Globe Theatre
- Thread starter Strebor Nosnibor
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Thanks, I've seen a few nebula and open clusters but no signs of globulars at all, even where there should be some. M4 for example is only 7200 ly away, and I haven't been able to find any sign of it. Which is leading me to conclude that these aren't modeled for some reason. M4 also contains a motherload of white dwarves so I'm sure if people had found that then it would have been reported.
I think globular clusters would present some serious performance issues. They tend to be incredibly dense towards their core where stars can as close to each other as Pluto is to the Sun. So if they implemented them, you'd basically have to be able to SuperCruise to another star system otherwise it would be REALLY weird jumping from star to star inside the GC core. So we are basically talking about introducing multiple "n-star" systems (eg. for binaries n=2) where n is measured in the thousands. On the plus side they wouldn't have to model planets 
How big are globular clusters? Even 1 LY is about 31.5m ls, and I don't think I've seen many system bigger than 1/2m ls - so another scaling factor to consider.
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There are different ways to measure the radius of a Globular Cluster, but the most common one the half-light radius (where most of the stars reside) gives a value of about 70LY wide, roughly the size of some small nebulae. Now imagine 100,000 stars inside that nebula... can you see why they didn't add them to the game?
I think globular clusters would present some serious performance issues. They tend to be incredibly dense towards their core where stars can as close to each other as Pluto is to the Sun. So if they implemented them, you'd basically have to be able to SuperCruise to another star system otherwise it would be REALLY weird jumping from star to star inside the GC core. So we are basically talking about introducing multiple "n-star" systems (eg. for binaries n=2) where n is measured in the thousands. On the plus side they wouldn't have to model planets
Well some systems already have more than a hundred bodies. Just imagine a system consisting of a hundred stars (I wouldn't expect many planets in the core of such a cluster, most would probably eventually be flung out of their systems).
That's pretty much exactly right. Planets would only last on average a few hundred million years before being knocked out of orbit. They don't disappear however unless they actually collide with a star, which is possible. They probably just end up orbiting the central mass of the cluster until they get flung out.
I guess your right, they could break up the core into "mini" systems of 100s of stars. But the boundary lines would be arbitrary, and the orbital trajectories would take a million years to calculate even on a super computer. Unless the just were all on a default elliptical path around the center of gravity of the core? Not very realistic, but at least it would be doable. I wonder if the Galaxy Map could handle printing 100.000 stars to a screen and then rotating them in 3D?
Is the density that much higher than the galactic core? This is an open question - I don't know.
Yes, I was also wondering about the galactic core, where in theory the same problem should persist. Also, you should get the same issue with some stellar nurseries. But I think the other thing to consider here is that not all globular are the same. Omega Centauri is particularly huge and particularly dense, but some are much smaller and much less dense. This is why some have argued that Asimov's brilliant short story "Nightfall" (about a world that exists inside a globular cluster) is at least conceptually possible in a looser cluster. I hear the argument about the performance issues, but I still think it should be possible to model a less dense globular, and I think the result would be amazing, especially as you approached it from many light years away.
I would still be interested in hearing about how the density might compare with the way the heart of the galaxy is now modeled (since I haven't yet been there myself. One day. . .)
I would still be interested in hearing about how the density might compare with the way the heart of the galaxy is now modeled (since I haven't yet been there myself. One day. . .)
That is an excellent observation Mephane. One of the things that I wonder is whether globular clusters are actually the central masses of galaxies that we have collided with and consumed, and stripped off their disk stars and dark matter, and they are just orbiting us like old ghosts. We don't really know where they come from, or how they were formed. But it has always seems strange to me that different types of structures would have formed from the same initial conditions. If they really are remnants of galactic cores, then the similar density at our galactic center would make sense, as well as the large black holes found at the center of some Globular Clusters.