> Quoting DED:
> > I'd like to know what others think about this and hopefully EDG will
> > weigh in as well. In fact, he probably already has a revised world
> > generation sequence to take this into account. :)
>
> Rather than figuring out how to generate them, I just want to know
> three things:
> - How "good" their atmosphere can be? (I.e. how thick/thin?)
> - Could such a planet support significant life? (I.e. macroscopic
> multicellular life.)
> - Could such a planet support human life?
The fact that they *aren't* gas giants pretty much guarantees that
they were exposed to really high temps for an extended period to
drive off the volatiles.
That would tend to make them a lot les hospitable to life.
--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com
==================================
Well, I know that in the one article they mention that three of them were quite close to the parent star so, yes, most, if not all, of the volatiles were likely baked off. Though, if they were further out, particularly in the habitable zone, why couldn't some of the volatiles still be left behind? Taking into account that these worlds are approx 4 to 9 times as massive as Earth, couldn't they be of sufficient size to hold onto enough of an atm? Could it be possible that the atmosphere is confined to valleys, thin and low as per Trav atm Type F?
Most of the gas giants that I've heard that were discovered have been listed as multiples of Jupiter's mass. I admit I haven't checked the full listings or consulted any frequency distribution graphs of exoplanet mass so I could be off. Yet we know from our own solar system that 14.5 Earth masses (Uranus) and sufficient distance from the parent star is enough to form a gas giant. Do we know where the dividing line is in terms of mass and distance from a star before a terrestrial world becomes a gas giant?
We know that there are "hot Jupiters," gas giants orbiting so close to their parent starts that Mercury seems like it's out in the bleachers. Even so, these worlds still retain atmospheres, albeit they are being boiled away. So is there an algorithm relating world and parent star mass, distance and atmosphere loss over time?
Putting this all together for Traveller, is there a way that these worlds can be usefully incorporated into Traveller or are they just written off as chthonian planets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chthonian_planet)? Or, if they're far enough from their parent star, failed "ice giants" (Uranus and Neptune)? Considering their hypothesized frequency in the real galaxy, it might be nice to find a way to incorporate them into Traveller somehow.
\_/
DED