orphans planets

netshaman [VR]

N
Hi all.
The last day on TV there was a scientific show that was talking about our galaxy and the different types of planets discovered in the last past years.
And there was a thread that was showing orphan planets, aka planets that were ejected from their orbit by gigantic gas giants with a very strong gravity.
So these planets are drifting in deep space and will never see a star again.
In order to follow accuracy, is there a chance we can come across these kind of objects ingame ( are they implemented ) ?
There was also dark gas giants very near to their sun, and pulsars with orbiting planets.
I hope we can discover such fantastic objects !!!
 

Jack Schmit

Jack Schmit
AKA: Rogue planets, nomad planets.

I'd like to see em as well, although I would be concerned.... what are they gonna do if they start smashing into space stations and/or planets?
 

InMemoriamSirocco

Banned
InMemoriamSirocco
You cannot come across a nomad planet in game because you hop between star systems. Nomad planets are OUTSIDE star systems. You are always INSIDE a star system. See the problem?

Also, you would barely be able to see them, as there would be no light source nearby to illuminate them. Just a shadow obscuring stars behind it.
 

Janichsan

J
InMemoriamSirocco said:
You cannot come across a nomad planet in game because you hop between star systems. Nomad planets are OUTSIDE star systems. You are always INSIDE a star system. See the problem?
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It's just a matter of how you define a "star system". There are "star systems" in ED where the central star is actually a brown dwarf, i.e. not really a star. So, from a technical point of view, a rogue planet could simply be as "star" system with a planet as central body.

However, there are some lore conforming explanations why you could not jump to a rogue planet. First of all, they are almost impossible to find. They are small and relatively cool, and the only reason we know they probably exist is because once in a while one of them happened to wander in front of a star. That is simply not enough information to pinpoint its location, since it could be almost everywhere between the observer and the star it passed.

Secondly, to be able to hyperjump to a location in ED lore, there must be a mass of a certain size at the location. The rogue planet's size is mostly too small to provide a gravity well deep enough to lock on.
 

AtheosisX

A
I'm unclear on how navigation is supposed to work in ED, but since you only ever arrive at stars I'm assuming rogue planets can't be traveled to. That said rogue planets can be detected through various means, particularly very large ones. If you traveled to one in a spaceship though they would be completely dark, at least in terms of visible light. So probably not something that would add much interest to ED. On a side note there seems to be solid science that suggests such planets could harbor life under certain circumstances (mostly via geothermal energy), which is kind of freaky when you think about it.
 

AtheosisX

A
Janichsan said:
It's just a matter of how you define a "star system". There are "star systems" in ED where the central star is actually a brown dwarf, i.e. not really a star. So, from a technical point of view, a rogue planet could simply be as "star" system with a planet as central body.

However, there are some lore conforming explanations why you could not jump to a rogue planet. First of all, they are almost impossible to find. They are small and relatively cool, and the only reason we know they probably exist is because once in a while one of them happened to wander in front of a star. That is simply not enough information to pinpoint its location, since it could be almost everywhere between the observer and the star it passed.

Secondly, to be able to hyperjump to a location in ED lore, there must be a mass of a certain size at the location. The rogue planet's size is mostly too small to provide a gravity well deep enough to lock on.
Click to expand...

Actually they can be detected without that much difficulty. Especially the large ones. The issue presently is simply distingusihing between them and small brown dwarfs.
 

Janichsan

J
AtheosisX said:
Actually they can be detected without that much difficulty. Especially the large ones.
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Source? To my knowledge, the vast majority of rogue planets have been "discovered" by singular microlensing events (around 500) – which do not allow to pinpoint the planet before or after the event. There are only a handful interstellar planets (<10) that have been observed directly. Compared to the estimations about how many rogue planets there are in the Milky Way, ranging from a few 100 billion to something around a quadrillion, that's almost nothing.
 
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netshaman [VR]

N
Perhaps ingame we can detect them while in hyperspace when we travel to another system, a sort of collision alert that force the ship to abort ?
Like the first Elite when in HJ suddenly you are "aborted" because of Thargoids ...
This kind of mechanic...
Such planets can be profitable if for example there are ruins of an ancient civilisation on them, or other kind of stuff...
The con can be this kind of planet can be only accessed one time because they continue their travel and don't stay into the path of the HJ the other time you travel by...
 

dementia

dementia
netshaman said:
Perhaps ingame we can detect them while in hyperspace when we travel to another system, a sort of collision alert that force the ship to abort ?
Like the first Elite when in HJ suddenly you are "aborted" because of Thargoids ...
This kind of mechanic...
Such planets can be profitable if for example there are ruins of an ancient civilisation on them, or other kind of stuff...
The con can be this kind of planet can be only accessed one time because they continue their travel and don't stay into the path of the HJ the other time you travel by...
Click to expand...

Indeed. There has to be some where that all those 'Ancient Artefacts' comes from!
 

AtheosisX

A
Janichsan said:
Source? To my knowledge, the vast majority of rogue planets have been "discovered" by singular microlensing events (around 500) – which do not allow to pinpoint the planet before or after the event. There are only a handful interstellar planets (<10) that have been observed directly. Compared to the estimations about how many rogue planets there are in the Milky Way, ranging from a few 100 billion to something around a quadrillion, that's almost nothing.
Click to expand...

Yes microlensing. Does that not count as discovered to you? I didn't say they've been directly observed or that scientists know anything substantial about the objects they've detected, but they know where they are and can chart their trajectory. They have catalog designations too. So yeah they aren't that hard to detect today, so detecting them shouldn't be an issue 1300 years in the future. The question is more whether or not the way interstellar travel works in ED would work when traveling directly to a planet rather than a star or pseudo-star (brown dwarf). The fact that we can't travel directly to planets in systems seems to suggest there might be an issue there.
 

Janichsan

J
AtheosisX said:
Yes microlensing. Does that not count as discovered to you? I didn't say they've been directly observed or that scientists know anything substantial about the objects they've detected, but they know where they are and can chart their trajectory.
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No, that's the point: you cannot chart their trajectory from microlensing. You only know for that single moment in time that the planet has been somewhere between you and the star which light it has bent. You don't know from which direction is was coming, you don't know in which direction it was moving, and you only have an extremely vague idea about the distance between you and the planet. By the time you have evaluated the microlensing event, you have already lost the rogue planet, with little to none chance to find it ever again. Hardly a "discovery" in the traditional sense.

So yeah they aren't that hard to detect today, …
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Quite contrary: since their detection relies purely on luck, I would say they are very hard to detect.
 
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JamesonJones

J
I don't think pulsars are in the game yet, but I'm pretty certain there are stars that at least look like variable stars in that they rotate very quickly and at least one significant flare making it appear to flash or pulse. Of course, an actual pulsar has beams of energy coming off it and close up would not look like a flare.

Many of the planet's and stations are actually very close to their stars. In our solar system, earth is 500 ls away from the sun, mercury our closest planet is roughly 150ls away from the sun (just using my head and math here). That means that any planet or station you find that is within 150ls of the jump in point are closer to their star than anything in our solar system.
 

AtheosisX

A
JamesonJones said:
I don't think pulsars are in the game yet, but I'm pretty certain there are stars that at least look like variable stars in that they rotate very quickly and at least one significant flare making it appear to flash or pulse. Of course, an actual pulsar has beams of energy coming off it and close up would not look like a flare.

Many of the planet's and stations are actually very close to their stars. In our solar system, earth is 500 ls away from the sun, mercury our closest planet is roughly 150ls away from the sun (just using my head and math here). That means that any planet or station you find that is within 150ls of the jump in point are closer to their star than anything in our solar system.
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I'm not following how this is related to the topic of this thread.
 

Tinman

Tinman
"Dark systems" have been mentioned several times before by devs so these might still come. It would also give explorers something new to find between normal star systems with new type of scanners.
 

Aquamonkey

Aquamonkey
JamesonJones said:
Many of the planet's and stations are actually very close to their stars. In our solar system, earth is 500 ls away from the sun, mercury our closest planet is roughly 150ls away from the sun (just using my head and math here). That means that any planet or station you find that is within 150ls of the jump in point are closer to their star than anything in our solar system.
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This is fine. From what I can tell this is only on smaller, cooler stars compared to the Sun. ED doesn't do this with hot stars.
 
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