Talk:Zebia

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Revision as of 11:51, 2 April 2007 by Tmeister (talk | contribs)
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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.

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

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

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

I have reorganized the unresolved issues into this section, replacing the other voting section (I hope you're not offended, Praesidium!). If you would like to vote, add your vote to the appropriate category, along with your reason(s), and update the "Current results". This section is not for general discussion of the topics, which should take place in another section or in the ZBB thread. For those who have already voted in the other voting section, I have copied your votes here; I hope you don't mind. Also, if the option you would like to vote for is not on the list, add it yourself, following the pattern of the other options.

As per Praesidium's suggestion, declare an issue resolved when there is at least a two-thirds majority in favor of one option, and when it is clear that everyone who intends to vote on that topic has done so. If somebody protests, we can reopen the voting, unless changing the decision would undermine work on the project that has taken place since the issue was first declared resolved. Tmeister

Number of sentient races/species

Current results

More than one

  1. I would also vote for multiple sentient species, as defined above, though a common ancestor origin would be the most logical and equivocating. Praesidium
  2. 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
  3. I'd like to have 2 sencient species. I'm thinking aboy different niches. This could make it impossible to have a relatively recent common ancestor, though. Jotomicron

One

  1. 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. Tmeister
  2. One sentient race only. Reasons for both are the same as Tmeister's. Cedh Audmanh
  3. One sentient race. Reason 1: no one here (myself included) is prepared to accurately and realistically predict the effects of multiple species. Reason 2: Our own world provides enough biological diversity to keep phallanxes of anthropologists busy; extra species are unnecssary. Reason 3: species will unquestionably be more monolithic and less diverse than on Earth, as Tmeister pointed out. brandrinn

Brightness of Alter

Current results

Brighter than the main moon

  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. Cedh Audmanh
  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. Corumayas
  3. Now we can see what happens to cultures who can't develop astronomy. Keenir

Similar to the main moon

  1. 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. Tmeister
  2. What Tmeister said. Jotomicron

Significantly dimmer

(No votes for this option)

Orbital period of Alter

Current results

More than about 8,000 years

(No votes for this option)

About 6,000 years

  1. 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. Tmeister

3,000-4,000 years

  1. 6000 years orbit sounds okay, but what about half or 2/3 of that, so even long-lived laymen might notice it? Cedh Audmanh

300-3,000 years

  1. I'd like an orbital period of 2000 years. Jotomicron

300 years or less

  1. I'd also like an orbital period on the order of a few decades to a couple centuries. Corumayas

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

I went ahead and deleted the determined issues, since there has been no contesting of the decisions. Praesidium 19:04, 17 March 2007 (PDT)

Be sure to sign with four tildes when nominating a topic for deletion to aid in determining what should be deleted. A topic should be nominated if one choice has the 2/3 majority and hasn't been voted on for a while. Praesidium 22:16, 31 March 2007 (PDT)

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
    • 5 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


Discussion on the size of Zebia: Hereby nominated for deletion

Due to its irrelevance.Praesidium 22:16, 31 March 2007 (PDT)

[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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