Sciency-stuff question for the cleverer people

OamodSias

OamodSias
So I just came across this and I was wondering if anyone here is a bit of an astro-buff, and if so, could two such bodies exist like this without, I don't know - ripping each other apart from gravity or some such. I mean, look at the effect of the moon on earth, what would it be like if two earth-sized planets were spinning around each other?

Have any screenies of interesting planetary formations, stars etc? I'd be interested to see em. :)

View attachment 13409
 
Last edited:

Windscreen Smudge

W
Stellar body deformation caused by neighboring objects isn't implemented yet. It's not just an issue with planets, but stars, rings, and everything else, and I can't wait for it to be fixed because the landscape will take on an entirely different atmosphere when it does.
 

Rifter

Rifter
OamodSias said:
So I just came across this and I was wondering if anyone here is a bit of an astro-buff, and if so, could two such bodies exist like this without, I don't know - ripping each other apart from gravity or some such. I mean, look at the effect of the moon on earth, what would it be like if two earth-sized planets were spinning around each other?View attachment 13409
Click to expand...
Actually surprisingly yes.It's all about mass and composition. They would have to be on the same orbital path and would spin around each other.... but there is a problem... their orbits may not be stable and if one has more mass than the other then eventually they would collide.... Something similar happened to earth in our early solar system... a planetoid collided with earth.... the resulting cataclysm ejected enough material to form our Moon.
 

OamodSias

OamodSias
Ok, the math in that wiki link hurt my brain something fierce (amazing some dude thought of this in 1848! :O).
I love the accuracy of this game!

Thanks everyone, :)

Have any screenies of interesting planetary formations, stars etc? I'd be interested to see em. :)
 

Doolittle

D
Most likely at that distance neither would be able to have stable satellites. They'd be highly volcanic due to the friction of being constantly ripped apart by the others gravity, and look rather elongated. A little closer you'd probably see the ash and gases created by the friction being pulled by the other body, forming a cloud in between until they finally collided.
 

Rifter

Rifter
OamodSias said:
Ok, the math in that wiki link hurt my brain something fierce (amazing some dude thought of this in 1848! :O). I love the accuracy of this game!Thanks everyone, :)Have any screenies of interesting planetary formations, stars etc? I'd be interested to see em. :)
Click to expand...
I'm afraid not... it's all static. The galaxy is procedurally generated but does not conform to laws of nature. There are no stellar nurseries or Super nova... there are no solar system formations and no asteroid collisions, there are no unknown anomalies.... it's all a bit like a well packaged sandwich with no filling.
 

Thalkran

Thalkran
Some of the planetary nebula's are probably the closest thing we have to supernova's atm.

They could make a Supernova into some big event where they have like Betelgeuse or another one close to death explode, then have us chart the remains.
 

Cmdr Mnumen

Cmdr Mnumen
The Roche Lobe overflow links are appropriate for stars, but in this case these are binary rocky planets (by the look of the screenshot). Binary rocky planets are definitely plausible, but to the best of my (ex-astronomer) knowledge we don't know of any firm candidates yet. I don't know how massive these planets are, but they look like they are in very close orbit so they would be having a strong gravitational effect on each other. That said, it doesn't look like they have significant amounts of water (so no tides) and the close interatio has probably stripped the atmospheres away. If they are small, the gravitational effect might not be sufficient to trigger significant vulcanism (like Jupiter trigger on Io, for example), in which case they could look very like this picture! Just my 2 cents...
 

OamodSias

OamodSias
Rifter said:
I'm afraid not... it's all static. The galaxy is procedurally generated but does not conform to laws of nature. There are no stellar nurseries or Super nova... there are no solar system formations and no asteroid collisions, there are no unknown anomalies.... it's all a bit like a well packaged sandwich with no filling.
Click to expand...

Well, I actually meant more along the lines of anything anybody has seen that's interesting, :) - Blackholes, nova's, stuff like that. Those two planets are the most interesting thing I've seen in a while, so was wondering if anyone else has had any Woah! moments of any stellar bodies and taken pics. :)
 
Last edited:

Zarlok

Zarlok
OamodSias said:
So I just came across this and I was wondering if anyone here is a bit of an astro-buff, and if so, could two such bodies exist like this without, I don't know - ripping each other apart from gravity or some such. I mean, look at the effect of the moon on earth, what would it be like if two earth-sized planets were spinning around each other?

Have any screenies of interesting planetary formations, stars etc? I'd be interested to see em. :)
Click to expand...

The Moon was once a part of earth when hit by another similar sized object which then split in 2. The Moon was therefore much closer to Earth and it didnt take long (astronomically) to become stable. So yes its possible depending on the distance how they formed etc.
 

Thalkran

Thalkran
OamodSias said:
Well, I actually meant more along the lines of anything anybody has seen that's interesting, :) - Blackholes, nova's, stuff like that. Those two planets are the most interesting thing I've seen in a while, so was wondering if anyone else has had any Woah! moments of any stellar bodies and taken pics. :)
Click to expand...

At HIP 100391 there is this Class A blue supergiant star. When I jumped in it freaked me out. It was small, much smaller than I was expecting. Then I noticed how fast it was spinning, completing a rotation every 15 seconds or so.

HIP 100391 (A).jpg


There was another HIP system whose designator I don't recall now, but it had a black hole fairly close to the Class A star. I put the black hole between me and the star and slowly flew toward it. The gravitational lens actually made the star look like it was shrinking as I got closer.
 

DCello

DCello
OamodSias said:
So I just came across this and I was wondering if anyone here is a bit of an astro-buff, and if so, could two such bodies exist like this without, I don't know - ripping each other apart from gravity or some such. I mean, look at the effect of the moon on earth, what would it be like if two earth-sized planets were spinning around each other?
Click to expand...

The Roche limit isn't really relevant since we don't have the masses of the objects -- if we did, we could calculate it and tell you if that thing would be disintegrating by now or not.

That being said, that not only is possible, but we have something similar in our solar system. That is something called a binary planet system, and it happens when the baricenter of two bodies is outside the bodies of either of them. They orbit each other instead of one acting as a satellite.

Pluto and it's moon are one of those. :)
 

khaitom

K
OamodSias said:
Ok, the math in that wiki link hurt my brain something fierce (amazing some dude thought of this in 1848! :O).
Click to expand...

People had a lot more time back then. Imagine how much could have been achieved by people that wasted their time on this forum if they'd done something constructive instead.

"ED Forums, the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation

ISP Fiber-optic links
Our United States of unconciousness
Apathetic therapeutic and extremely addictive
The methadone metronome pumping out
A 150 new threads 24 hours a day
You can flip through all of them
And still there's nothing worth reading" :D
 

kamenjar

kamenjar
I think that problem is the moon and the station that's orbiting each body. It doesn't seem possible because as the station should be consistently pulling its orbit towards the center of mass, and it would be ejected from orbit. Even if the station orbited the center of mass instead, it can not be too close to either of the planets or the tug would eject it.
 

Cmdr Pli55ken

C
Please note that the Roche limit is only applicable during the formation process and for low density/tensile objects. Two hard bodies can very well orbit inside the Roche limit. There are several examples of this in our own solar system.
(This can happen if bodies form far away from each other and later one catches the other/moves closer due to some other disturbance)

Also note that even low tesile strength objects that come within the Roche limit don't disintegrate immediately. The process can take thousands/millions of years. (E.g. when the Mars moon Phobos will do this it will still survive for quite some time. We don't even know whether it will disintegrate and form a ring or crash...or do a bit of both.)

The system depicted could even be in a 'fly by'-phase. which still might last hundreds of years.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom