I was just thinking, it would be a nice explorer's feature to be able to detect a star's habitable zone to find earth like or terraformable planets. I would imagine this feature being enabled after using a detailed surface scanner on a main sequence star. The habitable zone would then show on the system map. Stars that have no habitable zones, like neutron stars, black holes, and other types wouldn't show the zone after being scanned.
Viewing a star's "Habitable zone" by using detailed surface scanner on it
- Thread starter coojw
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That is a great idea & would make the search for terraformable bodies sooo much easier.
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As far as I can tell, black holes are the only stars that don't have a "habitable zone" since they don't emit anything on the electromagnetic spectrum. Case in point, I have found an earth-like world orbiting a neutron star at a distance of about 2kls (Ploea Aoc AF-R d4-410).
Basically, if a star emits any amount of energy, it should have a habitable zone. That said, in some cases the viability of a habitable zone could be called into question by the type of energy emitted by the star. For example, a star that emits lots of energy at higher frequencies (Gamma, X-Ray, etc...) would likely be less suitable than a star that emits more energy at lower frequencies (visible, infrared, etc...).
Anyways, this sounds like a good addition to the game. Of course, the scanner should really only give information about the location of the 'Goldilocks Zone' of the star. Other factors should really be taken into consideration when determining if a planet is terraformable, namely the amount of high frequency radiation emitted by the parent star as well as seismic activity caused by tidal forces.
it has been my experience that this game doesn't obserive Roche's limit (the point at which the gravity of the neutron star tears apart a planet or other body). Neutron stars being thousands of times hotter than normal stars, should in theory have habitable zones, but without the game really accounting for this limit, it seems like some of the earthlikes or other planets can form far too close to the star in this game (i'm speculating here). Neutrons are nearly as strong as black holes, and their destructive gravity doesn't seem to be represented well IMO, when you can get 1 to 2 LS from the star, that seems defeat logic. I think that neutron stars should have HUGE exclusion zones.
The voice pack from EDDiscovery tells me the habitable zone after I scan a star, yes it's unfortunate it doesn't show on the system map but after a lot of experience for most stars I can work it out by star class and size anyway, and if I'm not sure or forget what was said I can always just check the EDDiscovery app for it.
The roche limit for a neutron star is exactly the same as a star with the same mass measured from the centre of the star, the gravity gradient doesn't change once you exit the respective body surface. So if you have a neutron star with a mass of two solar masses the roche limit will be the same as for a G class star with two solar masses.
Love the idea. If drawing it is too much work, listing it as Ls interval under star info would be useful, too.
A complication here is that the habitable zones are only straightforward in a single-star system.
You can see this very clearly in something like a wide NS-K pair where almost all the planets around the K will be terraformable because the radiation from the neutron considerably broadens the K's habitable zone.
You can see this very clearly in something like a wide NS-K pair where almost all the planets around the K will be terraformable because the radiation from the neutron considerably broadens the K's habitable zone.
Yes that's true, and that doesn't even cover dwarf stars that orbit other stars where the planets orbiting the dwarf star may be in the habitable zone of the dwarf star but outside the habitable zone of the primary, I use this information as a guide and just go from there really, it's useful, but not defintive.
More "on the line of a theory" instead of...what?
A fact? Theory or fact, we go with what we have...
![[Diplomacy] Carnegie](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/123/123809.jpg?1553527149){kind=avatar}
Heaven forbid I should be allowed to figure anything out for myself.
On the risk of being a smart-a**, you might want to look up the definition of "Scientific theory". The introduction on wikipedia has a very fitting quote by Stephen Jay Gould: "...facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts."
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Cool idea, but it would have to come with the re-doing the system map. Since it will be easier to make the visualization of that zone. But I am all for it!
Actually the "habitable zone" that we refer to only applies to earth like life that needs liquid water and based on carbon, I am sure ammonia based life, if there were any intelligent ammonia based life forms out there, would have a different definition of habitable zone, but that's another subject altogether. I wouldn't really hit people hard with the theory/fact difference, in some areas of the world it's so misunderstood or deliberately distorted for ideological purposes that the average person has a problem telling the difference.
This is why I take it as guideline, if we were to take it as the only factor we would miss the gas giant based ammonia life forms out there. And I don't really think it would need a redoing of the system map, just a minor addition would do it, we don't need a lot, just a couple of lines on the system map to show the habitable zone if you were just considering the primary, or s small mark on the image of bodies like we have for inhabited landable planets and moons to show they are in the right temperature range for being habitable, that would catch the primary and secondary stars as well as any other stars that orbit around other stars.
Whether we ever get it, well I would like an orrery as well, which one would I like most? The orrery of course, that could contain much more information and would be a priority, I can find habitable zone worlds myself easy enough.
This is what I was saying about habitable zones, when we say habitable zones we are referring only to earthlike life, it's the definition used in ED and it's pretty solid, except there are always going to be outlying exceptions. The habitable zone is where you are most likely to find the conditions to support oxygen breathing carbon based life, nothing more.