Talk:Zebia

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Voting

I propose we use a two thirds majority voting system, as such will encourage debate to a point where everyone is happy enough if there is not a great majority, while not having the annoying qualities of a system requiring unaniminity. Thus when voting on an aspect give your opinion, and a brief statement of why. Praesidium

The Topics

These are the topics currently up for voting, if you feel there is something that needs deciding add it at the end of the list it fits best.

Contested Issues

This is for topics which are contested.

  1. Planet size: ~3% increase/decrease or 15% increase (measured in terms of radius). **Added to Results of voting on 3/5**
  2. Number of sentient races: should it be limited to just one, or should several be allowed; if so, under what circumstances? In this context I refer solely to beings capable of culture, and a hunter-gatherer civilization akin to early humans, not just something intelligent enough to use some form of language or recognize that the image in a mirror.

Other issues

These are topics that have are not really contested, likely due to lack of attention.

  1. Pat Sajak: Alex Trebek in disguise?
  2. Brightness and orbital period (related to distance) of Alter.
  3. Pronounciation of Novus: /nowUs nov@s/? **Added to Results of voting on 3/5**
  4. Will humans, or a human-like race, be used, or will all sentient beings be creations unique to this world, or at least the colaborators? **Added to Results of voting on 3/5**

The current status of the voting

This lists the current number of votes, for easy reference.

Upon thinking about it, I think gsandi's idea of signing the updated total would be a good way to insure that no vote is counted twice, etc... Praesidium

Contested Issues

  1. Planet Size **Added to Results of voting on 3/5**
    1. ~3%-3; Praesidium;
    2. 15%-1;
  2. Sentient Races
    1. >1-1; Praesidium
    2. 1-2; Cedh Audmanh
    3. <1-0;

Other Issues

  1. "Pat Sajak: Alex Trebek in disguise?" Is this a joke?
    1. Yes-2; Praesidium;
    2. No-0;
    3. What the hell is wrong with you?-1;
  2. What is Alter like?
    1. Brightness of Alter
      1. very bright (i.e. nights are not completely dark)-2; Cedh Audmanh
      2. similar to the main moon-1
      3. quite dim-0
    2. Orbital period
      1. ~8000 years or longer-0
      2. ~6000 years-1
      3. ~3000-4000 years-1; Cedh Audmanh
      4. ~300 years or less-1
  3. Pronunciation of Novus **Added to Results of voting on 3/5**
    1. /nowUs/-1; Praesidium;
    2. /nov@s/-1
    3. /DIs Iz Ir\El@v@nt/-~3
  4. Use Humans as the sentient species? **Added to Results of voting on 3/5**
    1. Yes-4; Praesidium; Cedh Audmanh
    2. No-0

Voting Itself

Post your votes here, under the respective category, also say whether or not you updated the results to include yours.

Note: discussion should be carried out primarily at the forum, this is for posting your official opinion on something, please update your posts rather than add new ones. Praesidium

Contested Issues

  1. For the size, I vote for a smaller change to shift focus more towards creation of culture, rather than novelty beastiaries, plus with an increase as much as 15% it just looks like you're trying too hard to say "this planet is different from Earth".
  2. I would also vote for multiple sentient species, as defined above, though a common ancestor origin would be the most logical and equivocating.Praesidium


  1. I favor a ~3% increase in size because the earth's surface area is large enough as it is, and more gravity would make humans less human-like and reduce the number of animals that can be used as beasts of burden.
  2. One sentient race only. The reasons are: the possibility of it becoming a thinly-veiled analogy for real-life racism; the tendency for each race to be culturally monolithic due to the small number of contributors; the increased possibility of culture-destroying genocides or extinctions that would be unfair to the conculture's creator; and the difficulty of roleplaying from the point of view of nonhumans. Copied by Praesidium, originally posted by Tmeister


  1. I'm voting for a planet similar in size to Earth.
  2. One sentient race only. Reasons for both are the same as Tmeister's.Cedh Audmanh


I'm not casting a vote on these-- in both cases either option is fine with me at this point. However I don't favor a planet more than 15% bigger, and I think I'd prefer no more than two sentient species. Corumayas

Number of sentient races

Two or three, maybe the ancestral Homo spread to various continents and then evolved differently enough on each to form a separate species. or we could have some local differentiation by size and ecological niche, as in LOTR.

Gsandi 07:12, 4 March 2007 (PST) Moved here by Praesidium hope you don't mind gsandi...

Other Issues

  1. No, because they'll be the dualistic pantheon of th-what the hell do you mean is that a joke? Have you seen my other posts today? Of course it's a joke.
  2. I believe I calculated that the illumination provided by Alter based off the figures and equations in it may have been gsandi's calculations related to Novus would be ~.5% that of Novus, which would be equivolent to that of Sol. I'll go along with the most popular opinion on Alter's orbit of Novus (though I would like to know: would Alter orbit Novus, or would the two circle each other? I have little knowledge of astronomy, and don't intend to change that too much.)


I believe there was talk of that on an earlier page, I'll dredge it up and post it on the wiki talk page, or create a page on the moons.Praesidium

  1. Is this a joke? Confused
  2. I think it should be about as bright as the quarter moon, but it would be more noticable since it would be concentrated into a planet-sized angular area. I think the orbital period should be somewhere along the lines of 6000 years, which amounts to 1 degree every 17 years or so, easily noticeable once astronomers start keeping records. Knowing the apparent brightness and the period of the orbit, all we need is a way to correlate absolute brightness to mass, and we can calculate the distance, mass, and absolute brightness using Kepler's 3rd Law.
  3. I personally favor the Anglicized pronunciation /"noU.v@s/, since it is being used in an English, not Latin, context, though it will only be an issue in the unlikely scenario that we make a movie or radio show about the conworld. Although I'm sure some of us would be delighted if the project got to that stage, there's no point in arguing about it until it's necessary.
  4. The people of the conworld should be humans, for the reason discussed in Issue #2, that is, that it is difficult to realistically roleplay non-humans without making them human minds in alien bodies.

If only one thing can be decided now, it should be the size of the planet, so we can start with the geography. Also, I'm going to change the short name of the sun to "Novus", relying on the "silence is implicit agreement" precedent.

Another issue: how far and big should the moons be? Nobody seems to have said anything about that. Copied by Praesidium, originally posted by Tmeister


  1. No comment.
    1. I'd like a really bright Alter, capable to prevent the night from being pitch-black, as this would probably foster interesting cultural consequences.
    2. 6000 years orbit sounds okay, but what about half or 2/3 of that, so even long-lived laymen might notice it?
  3. This is irrelevant. I think we should change the name anyway to something more unique (I don't have a suggestion yet), though we can of course use Novus as a reference for the time being.
  4. Humans, or very close (Zomp's uesti would qualify but Tolkien's Elves wouldn't, due to their immortality).

Cedh Audmanh, votes added.


  1. ...
  2. For Alter, since we've decided to have a binary star system I vote that we make the most of it by having it fairly bright and close.
    1. I'd prefer something at least as bright as the full moon but not so bright as to mess with photosynthesis and stuff-- I think there's a lot of leeway there.
    2. I'd also like an orbital period on the order of a few decades to a couple centuries.
  3. Who cares? It's just a temporary working name, until we figure out what the locals call it.
  4. One sentient species should be more or less human; if there's more than one maybe the other(s) could be a bit more alien.

Corumayas, votes added.


Brightness and orbital period (related to distance) of Alter.

It's going to be a very bright star - quite a bit brighter than Venus at its brightest. Can it cast a shadow? I don't know and don't care that much. Orbital period: again, I don't mind one way or another - what is obvious is that at times Alter will be visible at night, at times during the day (just like the Moon and [at times] Venus, it will be visible even in bright sunlight), and at times it will be behind Novus, invisible. The constant running around of Alter will no doubt create interesting mythologies.

Pronounciation of Novus: /nowUs nov@s/?

/nov@s/, definitely. We are English-speakers here. Locals will surely not call it anything like it.

Orbital tilt?

27.6° Why not?

Will humans, or a human-like race, be used, or will all sentient beings be creations unique to this world, or at least the colaborators?

Let's take it easy on our imaginations, and create one or more human-like sentient species, a bit the way Mark did it. There should be some differences, but the basic characteristics can be human-like. We can add a tail though, can't we?

Gsandi 07:12, 4 March 2007 (PST) Moved here by Praesidium hope you don't mind gsandi...

Results of voting

I'm adding this to show the results of topics that have been decided. A description of a given topic will placed here, and a note should be put next to the relevant topic in voting saying that said topic appears to be decided, that topic should be removed from voting after several days have passed. If you wish to contest the decision to move it here for any reason you must do so before it is removed from voting. To do so make a note here explaining why, rather than deleting it outright. Praesidium

Physical characteristics of the system

  • Size of Zebia: ~3%>Earth
    • 3 votes in favor of ~3%
    • 1 vote in favor of 15%
    • 1 abstain

Biological

  • Use of humans/humanlike creatures as the sentient race(s): Yes
    • 4 votes in favor
    • 0 votes against

Other

  • Pronounciation: it is in fact irrelevant, as we can refer to it in our heads however we like.
    • 1 in favor of /nowUs/
    • 1 in favor of /nov@s/
    • 3 proclaiming its irrelevance

List of Contributors

If you are a contributor, sign below with three tildes. If your wiki screenname is different from your ZBB name, list that as well.

Discussion on the size of Zebia:

[quote="Tmeister"] Obviously the planet cannot be exactly the same size as Earth (~ 3960 miles or 6372 km as the radius), but in light of the discussion about the size of the planet, it needn't be significantly larger. So how about around 4100 miles (6600 km)? The increase in gravity is very low - if the density is comparable to Earth's, an object weighing 50 pounds on Earth would weigh 51.8 pounds on the new planet. On the other hand, this gains an extra 4,513,600 sq miles of surface area (11,690,170 sq. km, about 68% of Russia, admittedly not very much).[/quote]

I don't know how you got this answer, I arrive at a different one.

If r is the mean radius of thre Earth, and x is the difference between Zebia's and the Earth's radius, then the new surface area is 4п(r+x)^2 = 4п(r^2 + 2rx + x^2). Since we want the increase in surface area only, we subtract the Earth's actual surface area, and the resulting difference can be calculated (at r=6372 and x=228):

4п(2rx+x^2) = 4п(2,906,000 + 52,000) [rounding off the thousands]

= 4п(2,958,000)

= 37,152,000 sq.km.

This is more than 1.5 times the area of the ex-USSR.

Nevertheless, I would be in favour of making the planet even larger - or, alternatively, quite a bit smaller - then the Earth. Adding 228 km to the actual radius of the Earth adds only about 3% - this, to me, is too much of a coincidence. Let's make it a good 15% more (or less). I suggest, more - making a radius of, say, 7350 km. This should certainly give us a large enough surface area to play on. (If heavier gravity becomes a problem, we can always decrease the average density of the planet - as a general principle in conworlding, always vary the parameters you know the least about!)

So, what's the increased surface area now, with an x value of (at r=6372 and x=978)?

4п(2rx+x^2) = 4п(12,464,000 + 956,000) [rounding off the thousands]

= 4п(13,420,000) = 168,555,000 sq.km.

This is slightly more than the actual total land area of the Earth (roughly 150,000,000 sq.km.), so that by applying our 15% or so increase in the radius, we can double the land area and still have about 20,000,000 sq.km left over as more oceans.

Let's wait and see what others think.

Gsandi 02:07, 26 February 2007 (PST)

I'd be in favor of the smaller increase in radius, as too much and too many things become alien, making it harder to work with. Then you have the fact that increased mass wouldn't just mean that things were heavier, but they fall faster too (with an increase of 15% in radius fravitational acceleration would nearly double, if my equation is even close to being correct [g*m1^2*m2^2/r^2](?) increasing the radius by 15% should result in a volume increase of ~32%, assuming the same (or similar) density that would mean that gravity would be ~74% greater). Praesidium

Not quite, as I already showed once in a thread on the zompist board. Assuming that average density remains the same, the mass of the planet goes up with the cube of the radius, but at the same time the surface is further away from the centre of the planet, and gravity decreases with the square of the distance. Therefore the actual acceleration on an object due to gravity is subject to the relationship r^3/r^2, i.e. it is exactly proportional to the distance from the centre. Thus, a 15% increase in radius results in a 15% increase in the acceleration due to gravity.

I am not sure how to interpret your equation g*m1^2*m2^2/r^2. If m1 and m2 refer to the masses of the objects, it is simply incorrect: gravitational force F=Gm1m2/r^2, i.e. it is proportional to the masses of the objects in question, not to the squares of their masses. G (and not g) is the gravitational constant, of course.

It is also very important to make a clear difference between force and acceleration. The force between two objects due to gravity is indeed proportional to the product of their masses, but acceleration being the product of mass and acceleration, you have the equation: gm1 = Gm1m2/r^2, where the two m1's cancel, so that the acceleration g of an object in a gravitational field is going to be g = Gm2/r^2, i.e. it is independent of its own mass (as Galileo already proved experimentally at the Tower of Pisa).

Weight and gravitational force on an object are basically the same thing, you don't have to specify that "things were heavier, but they fall faster too".

Pragmatically speaking, I don't think that a 15% increase in surface gravity would make much of a difference to animals evolving on the planet - their muscles and other physiological parameters will have evolved in order to deal with the prevalent gravity. Conceivably they would be a bit smaller and squatter than we are (on the average), but conceivably they would have evolved a somewhat more efficient way to use sugar (or other) - based energy use.

Gsandi 03:03, 28 February 2007 (PST)

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