Creation Daily

[A Joe in the Bush]

Random thought I had while running; Fire magi living in glass houses.

Glass is just molten sand right, so I figured that if a group of fire magi lived in the desert, they could make and shape sand into glass really easily. Does that make any sense and would it actually be possible?

[Sir Jerric he/him]

Random thought I had while running; Fire magi living in glass houses.

Glass is just molten sand right, so I figured that if a group of fire magi lived in the desert, they could make and shape sand into glass really easily. Does that make any sense and would it actually be possible?

Making molten glass from sand is easy enough if they can generate a high enough temperature. But in my understanding, useful glass (such as transparent, or durable) is a product more of controlled cooling. And the shaping process is yet another function.

 

So I'd say a great deal of the possibility depends on the extent of your fire magi power set, or on the available technology to fill the gaps.

[Quiver he/him]

Anyone got any advice for writing crossover fan fiction? I'm debating whether or not to do a crossover story, and wondering what stuff would be important to bare in mind...

[Edgedancer he/him]

Anyone got any advice for writing crossover fan fiction? I'm debating whether or not to do a crossover story, and wondering what stuff would be important to bare in mind...

Honor both franchises you crossover? It's hard to say anything more specific without knowing which canons we are talking about here.

[Quiver he/him]

Honor both franchises you crossover? It's hard to say anything more specific without knowing which canons we are talking about here.

Fair point!

Arrow and Agents of Shield. For a plot, I'm thinking about Grant Ward arriving in Starling, and Coulson and company getting in touch with "Agent Queen" to track him down.

[Ookla the Absent]

Random thought I had while running; Fire magi living in glass houses.

Glass is just molten sand right, so I figured that if a group of fire magi lived in the desert, they could make and shape sand into glass really easily. Does that make any sense and would it actually be possible?

Glass is a lot more complicated than that. While at its most basic glass is fused oxides (generally sillica, although others can be used) you need to add in other chemicals in order to lower the fusing temperature to a reasonable level. Also, glassmaking requires constant heat within a certain range for a while, followed by controlled heating (which is why the first bar of glass I ever made shattered, someone left the door of the kiln open a mite too long and the glass cooled a tad too much). Also, shaping a house of glass would be, frankly, a nightmare.

 

Not trying to put down your idea or anything, just pointing out some logistic difficulties. Most people probably wouldn't even think about it, but every once in a while you run across me.

Ancient people made glass using, along with the sand, ashes of seaweed and such to get it to work with their fires. You could probably make houses out of glass bricks, but I wouldn't suggest trying to fuse them together, unless the wizards were pros at this and had the manpower to stand there for a few days systematically cooling everything down lest thermal shock destroy the bricks.

 

In conclusion, if the glass houses aren't a major part of the story, go ahead. If they are more than a passing detail, you may want to come up with a way to make it work. Again, cool idea that few people would take issue with, but few people have actually taken time to study glass or make it.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

Fair point!

Arrow and Agents of Shield. For a plot, I'm thinking about Grant Ward arriving in Starling, and Coulson and company getting in touch with "Agent Queen" to track him down.

 

I'd say involve both franchises equally. Stay true to the "feel" of each as you weave them together, and keep everyone in character. Other than that, there aren't a lot of rules. Part of the fun of reading crossovers is seeing how the author goes about combining two different franchises, so don't be afraid to put your own unique spin on it. 

[A Joe in the Bush]

Glass is a lot more complicated than that. While at its most basic glass is fused oxides (generally sillica, although others can be used) you need to add in other chemicals in order to lower the fusing temperature to a reasonable level. Also, glassmaking requires constant heat within a certain range for a while, followed by controlled heating (which is why the first bar of glass I ever made shattered, someone left the door of the kiln open a mite too long and the glass cooled a tad too much). Also, shaping a house of glass would be, frankly, a nightmare.

 

Not trying to put down your idea or anything, just pointing out some logistic difficulties. Most people probably wouldn't even think about it, but every once in a while you run across me.

Ancient people made glass using, along with the sand, ashes of seaweed and such to get it to work with their fires. You could probably make houses out of glass bricks, but I wouldn't suggest trying to fuse them together, unless the wizards were pros at this and had the manpower to stand there for a few days systematically cooling everything down lest thermal shock destroy the bricks.

 

In conclusion, if the glass houses aren't a major part of the story, go ahead. If they are more than a passing detail, you may want to come up with a way to make it work. Again, cool idea that few people would take issue with, but few people have actually taken time to study glass or make it.

 

I wasn't even going to use it at all. It was just an Idea I had that i wanted to know if it was workable or not.

Thanks for the help!.

[Kobold King he/him]

There are too many awesome ideas on this thread for me to count.

 

 

Question for the scientifically minded. In a binary star system, how feasible would it be to have plants that grow differently colored leaves on both sides of themselves, for collecting light from both stars simultaneously? Specifically I'm picturing plants that are green on one half and purple on the other, with the green side collecting from a reddish star while the purple side absorbs rays from a brighter yellow star. I'm thinking this plant would slowly rotate to keep its sides optimally facing the ideal stars.

 

How plausible is this?

[Ookla the Absent]

There are too many awesome ideas on this thread for me to count.

 

 

Question for the scientifically minded. In a binary star system, how feasible would it be to have plants that grow differently colored leaves on both sides of themselves, for collecting light from both stars simultaneously? Specifically I'm picturing plants that are green on one half and purple on the other, with the green side collecting from a reddish star while the purple side absorbs rays from a brighter yellow star. I'm thinking this plant would slowly rotate to keep its sides optimally facing the ideal stars.

 

How plausible is this?

That would be tough to find an answer to, as that combines biology/botany and astro. I can ask my father if he has any insights on the binary star thing, but not sure how much that would help.

[Amanuensis he/him]

One idea I have been toying around with for quite a while now involves a world in a binary star system as well, though it's a bit different then what I've seen mentioned here before.

 

Rather than the planet orbiting both stars at once, it is constantly being exchanged between the two to orbit one, then the other, in a figure eight formation. There is a long year (65 weeks long) where it orbits the large white sun, Helior and a short year (34 weeks) where it orbits the small yellow sun, Solei. There is also a season that lasts only one week while it's in the center of both. They call a complete orbit of both stars a eul, and the inhabitants of the world measure their age by them. Because a eul is significantly longer than a earth year (a little more than three times longer), 7 is the age they consider a person to have reached adulthood.

 

Effectively the planet has seven seasons (three for each sun and then the one in between). Though the two stars are different sizes and colors they are similar enough in mass that the change in gravity isn't cataclysmic. It is, however, noticeable. The change in the seasons is determined by the amount of light on the planet as opposed to the weather, though the latter is affected by the former. During the short season where the world is directly between the two suns, gravity is significantly reduced because of how the planet is being pulled towards opposite directions. There's also never a period of darkness because by the time one sun is setting in the west the other is rising in the east. This period of time is considered very sacred (the week is similar to both Hanukkah and New Years, in a way).

 

The two suns have a couple of effects on the world and the Alysians (human-equivalent species that inhabits it), most notably the fact that only males can be conceived during the long year and females during the short. This relates to the mythological origin of the species as well as their magic system.

 

 

 

EDIT: I should note that the story takes place in a medieval era rather than a futuristic setting.

Edited August 28, 2015 by Alvom Halbin

[Kobold King he/him]

That would be tough to find an answer to, as that combines biology/botany and astro. I can ask my father if he has any insights on the binary star thing, but not sure how much that would help.

 

That'd be nice. I'm pretty sure it's possible botanically--honestly, all it involves is using pigments on different parts of the body, and as far as I know there's no major obstacles to that being possible.

 

One major concern of mine is that I'm not fully understanding the mechanics of a binary star system, and that two stars orbiting close enough to lend similar amounts of light to their planet would bake it into a crisp long before these nifty plants could evolve. Alas, astrophysics isn't my strong suit. Were I God I'd probably have accidentally obliterated a thousand civilizations by now.

 

 

Kobold, I just spent several hours on the multiverse wiki, and that's not likely to be an isolated incident. Thank/Curse you.

 

Wow. Really? Did you browse the archives on Wikia, or Shoutwiki?

 

(Back in 2012 we tried to manually move all our best work to Shoutwiki for licensing reasons, but in the end all we did was separate the wikis into a "classic" version that held all the oldest, original articles safe on Shoutwiki and a "new" version left behind on Wikia where all the new users were free to frolic.)

[Mestiv he/him]

There are too many awesome ideas on this thread for me to count.

 

 

Question for the scientifically minded. In a binary star system, how feasible would it be to have plants that grow differently colored leaves on both sides of themselves, for collecting light from both stars simultaneously? Specifically I'm picturing plants that are green on one half and purple on the other, with the green side collecting from a reddish star while the purple side absorbs rays from a brighter yellow star. I'm thinking this plant would slowly rotate to keep its sides optimally facing the ideal stars.

 

How plausible is this?

 

 

I'm afraid that from evolutionary point of view, that is not really too probable. Based on this explanation of why our plants are green, I would say, that plants in binary systems would grow leaves of color, that is best suited to protect them from light of both stars combined. Having 2 different colored leaves would cause them to be damaged by the start that they are not meant to absorb light from... 

 

Now, many questions regarding flora on such planet requires you to decide, how this bisolar system work. Is the orbit of the planet big, with two stars close to each other in the middle? Is the shape of the orbit more like number 8 with planet cruising between stars (that would probably not sustain life)? Or is the other sun orbiting the first one quite far away, so the planet has a normal orbit around one of them?

 

If the 2 suns are close to each other, and the planet circulates them both, you will most likely have them both visible for most of the time, as they would appear to be close to each other on the sky. With orbit in the shape of 8, you would have some CRAZY gravity influence on the planet and temperature differences. The last case might be the most interesting. With one star working more like our sun, and the other would appear on the skies bigger or smaller depending on the orbit synchronization. If this second star was very bright or if it would emit a very specific radiation, you could have forms of life that would hibernate for some time when the star is far away and wake up when it's close again.

Edited August 28, 2015 by Mestiv

[Kobold King he/him]

I'm afraid that from evolutionary point of view, that is not really too probable. Based on this explanation of why our plants are green, I would say, that plants in binary systems would grow leaves of color, that is best suited to protect them from light of both stars combined. Having 2 different colored leaves would cause them to be damaged by the start that they are not meant to absorb light from... 

 

Now, many questions regarding flora on such planet requires you to decide, how this bisolar system work. Is the orbit of the planet big, with two stars close to each other in the middle? Is the shape of the orbit more like number 8 with planet cruising between stars (that would probably not sustain life)? Or is the other sun orbiting the first one quite far away, so the planet has a normal orbit around one of them?

 

If the 2 suns are close to each other, and the planet circulates them both, you will most likely have them both visible for most of the time, as they would appear to be close to each other on the sky. With orbit in the shape of 8, you would have some CRAZY gravity influence on the planet and temperature differences. The last case might be the most interesting. With one star working more like our sun, and the other would appear on the skies bigger or smaller depending on the orbit synchronization. If this second star was very bright or if it would emit a very specific radiation, you could have forms of life that would hibernate for some time when the star is far away and wake up when it's close again.

 

Hrrm. I forgot the protection element to chlorophyll. Wait a minute though--if reflecting light is that important, how do purple plants survive? Anthocyanin is highly dominant in their leaves, and it absorbs green light like my brothers suck down a carton of chocolate milk. And they grow perfectly fine right next to the green plants in my garden, when they're both being bathed in equal amounts of green radiation. Are there special adaptations employed by purple plants that I could make use of in my setting?

 

 

I'm definitely not gonna try working out the astrometrics of a figure-8 orbit. Carl Sagan always held that such a planet would have been ejected from the solar system after only a couple million years, and I don't have the know-how to work around that. I'm thinking this planet could have a normal orbit around a small M-type star, probably tidally locked to it, while that star in turn orbits a much brighter F-type subgiant at 6 astronomical units or so. Does that sound doable?

[Kobold King he/him]

I was mostly on the shoutwiki version. I assumed that all of the best articles were there. However, with this information, I'll be sure to check out wikia as well. Were they really planning to exploit a loophole and sell your work?

 

Planning on it? Nah, we were far too obscure for that. But they could have, which seemed pretty terrifying to us at the time.

 

 

So, do I finally have someone else who will tremble before the name "Hectocapitus" when I speak it? Another living soul who will remember the Veiled Ones with reverence and awe, and who will know that punching an Aian in the snout is a very bad idea?

[Young Bard he/him]

Can I just back this up? Golems are very cool...but I can't think of many examples of them in books.

Discworld, really, is the only one that comes to mind...

 

They featured quite prominently in the Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud, but that's about it that I can think of.

 

Also, only now do I realize how scary hive mind controlled golems could be...

[ccstat he/him]

Golems. 

They are awesome.

[...]Do they have sentience? Where does the spirit come from? The material? Is there a great big hive mind controlling every single golem that exists and has ever existed? Do golems have personal agendas? Do they have opinions on the tasks they're set?

 You are right, golems are usually included in stories as cautionary "creation-gone-wrong" automata, and their thoughts are either ignored or nonexistent. Here are the stories I can think of that have featured golems outside of the "be careful what orders you give this" role:

• Bartimaeus Trilogy: The Golem's Eye (already mentioned) - antagonist; material and animating energy discussed; thoughts etc. nonexistent
• Discworld: Feet of Clay, Making Money, Going Postal (already mentioned) - motives, individuality, and opinions given substantial treatment.
• The Golem and the Jinni - a truly excellent book all about the inner life of a golem--highly recommended
• Gunnerkrigg Court: Ch 33 Give and Take (link) - definitely individual, definitely with agendas.
• Fablehaven - Been a while, but I think the golem shows up in most of the books in the series. Starting out as an automaton, various events lead him to gain more volition and sentience.

I'm sure there are more, but in looking for additional inspiration I found that the category page for Fictional Golems on Wikipedia is surprisingly short, even though it includes some edge cases (like Olaf from Frozen). Top google hits gave me these three lists. (There is some overlap.)

 

 

Only Flagrants can use magical weapons, but any Flagrant can use any weapon.

[...]

I need Flagrants to be weak enough for magical weapons and items to be a major benefit, but they also need to be strong and flashy enough to have a noticeable difference between themselves and Smiths.

I am surprised that the Smiths who make the weapons can't use them, but on reflection it makes for a much more interesting dynamic. Rather than two different types of combat mage you necessarily get a combat type and a support staff type. The more I think about it the more I'm intrigued by the implications, so I think you have a winner concept here. It will really set itself apart from the other systems if you develop that aspect of it.

As far as power balance for Flagrants, I think the key is setting their "recharge" period long enough that any impressive and flashy magic they do prevents them from doing more for a very significant period. Whether that means 5 minutes or 5 days is up to you, and probably depends on how much power they put into it, but the cost of "If I do this I will be vulnerable and all my enemies will know it" is a good one. This automatically creates an environment where group tactics and support trump individual power and skill, and where enhanced weaponry can be crucial to keeping your Flagrants alive.

Are Smiths only good for weapons? Can they make magical construction equipment? Enhanced kitchen appliances? Super-efficient air conditioners? Extra-awesome speedboats? It seems to me that non-martial applications of magical instrumentation would be an important aspect of the society as well.

 

 

 

How feasible would it be to have plants that grow differently colored leaves on both sides of themselves, for collecting light from both stars simultaneously?

As discussed by others, this isn't too likely to come about from the setup you describe. However, if you are interested in including that visual, it should be fairly straightforward to come up with a semi-plausible reason for it to exist. For example, maybe there is a bacterial symbiote of the plants that is vulnerable to radiation from one of the stars. It could grow in a colored film on one side of the leaves, and the leaves have evolved to turn with the suns in order to shade their friendly colonies.

 

Alternatively (and this one is trickier since plants are sessile) there are lots of examples of light/dark coloring in animals to camouflage against different backgrounds (e.g. fish with light underbellies, so they are harder to see from below). Apply some sort of camouflage-against-locusts idea, and you could maybe come up with a rationale to have isolated forests that behave that way.

 

Also, if you've been to a flower garden you may recall that our boring earth-plants grow colorful parts that are not dedicated to photosynthesis. I'm sure you could come up with an excuse to have certain flowering plants look chromatically bifurcated for the benefit of different pollinators or something.

[Mestiv he/him]

Hrrm. I forgot the protection element to chlorophyll. Wait a minute though--if reflecting light is that important, how do purple plants survive? Anthocyanin is highly dominant in their leaves, and it absorbs green light like my brothers suck down a carton of chocolate milk. And they grow perfectly fine right next to the green plants in my garden, when they're both being bathed in equal amounts of green radiation. Are there special adaptations employed by purple plants that I could make use of in my setting?

 

 

I'm definitely not gonna try working out the astrometrics of a figure-8 orbit. Carl Sagan always held that such a planet would have been ejected from the solar system after only a couple million years, and I don't have the know-how to work around that. I'm thinking this planet could have a normal orbit around a small M-type star, probably tidally locked to it, while that star in turn orbits a much brighter F-type subgiant at 6 astronomical units or so. Does that sound doable?

 

About the not-green plants, here are some explanations: http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=1110

It boils down to the fact, the chlorophyll is not the only option for plants to generate nutrition from the sun, there are other photosynthetic pigments that have different colors. The purple plants you are mentioning have a lot of Anthocyanin (but they also have chlorophyll like the others), just because those plants have different mix of pigments in their leaves, they appear purple

 

Now, for the stars... I'm really not any expert on those things, so I can't say if such configuration would be stable or not However, I really like the idea of a planet that's tidally locked to it's star. That would probably result, that on this planet, next to the magnetic poles, there would be temperature poles Extremely hot where the planet is closest to the start and extra cold on the exact opposite side. This setting would probably result in a circular area spanning around the whole planet, where life would be possible. It would start at the border of the shadow and span in the direction of the heat pole. How wide would it be depends on how far from the start the planet would be... Hmm... I really like this planet idea! And the other, bigger yet further star would allow to have some exotic life-forms in the dark side of the planet.

[Gabriele she/her]

And large temperature differences will lead to some really big storms.

 

I'm amazed about the creativity here. I like to read Fantasy, but I'm not good at coming up with cool Fantasy concepts. Luckily, I like historical fiction as well and I'm better at writing that. 

 

Though I do have that alternate world where the lost towns/realms of legend have been real (you know, like Kêr Ys, Avalon, Lyonesse, Vineta, Cantre'r Gwaelod ...) and left dangerous magic behind when they sank in one big cataclysm. That one grew out of a hist fic idea where I could not match the story I had in mind with the history of the time. It's in the drawer right now, but I sometimes fiddle with it a bit. I need a better grip on the magic before I'm going to rewrite the first part and continue with the story. But I do like some characters and plot ideas well enough that I don't want to give up on it. Maybe Nano this year? The Roman and AngloSaxon stuff is in a stage where Nano won't work to continue one of those NiPs. 

[Mestiv he/him]

For a long time I've been playing with a very general idea of a magic world. You know this cliche of "old, powerful magic"? Like in almost every book where they have magic, there are some artifacts of ancient magic, much more powerful than the magic main characters use? That always got me a bit angry, as it negates the humanity desire and ability to progress. I want a world, where magic is more powerful than it has ever been before, and characters are baffled by how primitive the "ancient artifacts" are. That setting would be usable only for some silly story I guess, but still, it would nicely point out, how "ancient magic" is overused in the fantasy genre.

[Kobold King he/him]

Now, for the stars... I'm really not any expert on those things, so I can't say if such configuration would be stable or not However, I really like the idea of a planet that's tidally locked to it's star. That would probably result, that on this planet, next to the magnetic poles, there would be temperature poles Extremely hot where the planet is closest to the start and extra cold on the exact opposite side. This setting would probably result in a circular area spanning around the whole planet, where life would be possible. It would start at the border of the shadow and span in the direction of the heat pole. How wide would it be depends on how far from the start the planet would be... Hmm... I really like this planet idea! And the other, bigger yet further star would allow to have some exotic life-forms in the dark side of the planet.

 

 

Oh, yes. Though many exobiologists nowadays think that the temperature poles wouldn't necessarily preclude life; in some models, a circulating atmosphere is sufficient to spread warm and cold air currents equally across both ends of the planet. The storms would be pretty spectacular, and life would have to evolve to cope with them, but the effect would be to make both sides of the planet habitable by well-adapted organisms.

 

Though I do like the idea of the yellow star influencing life on the dark side. How regular would the solar cycle be in this case? Would the yellow star rise and set above the horizon on a set schedule, or would there be complications of some kind?

 

 

As discussed by others, this isn't too likely to come about from the setup you describe. However, if you are interested in including that visual, it should be fairly straightforward to come up with a semi-plausible reason for it to exist. For example, maybe there is a bacterial symbiote of the plants that is vulnerable to radiation from one of the stars. It could grow in a colored film on one side of the leaves, and the leaves have evolved to turn with the suns in order to shade their friendly colonies.

 

I'm not wholly convinced that this is impossible, though I agree it's not likely for this planet. But since there's around a billion habitable planets in this setting, I'm sure I can get away with having these plants somewhere.

 

I like those ideas though, and I might use them if you don't mind. I especially love the idea of camouflaged plants, though it's difficult to say what kind of incompetent herbivores would fall for such trickery. Maybe mimicry of some kind--multicolored plants that mimic the patterns of a venomous insect of some kind?

[Mestiv he/him]

Well Kobold, your solar system got me really intrigued and I made some research 

 

First of all, the setup of one M-type small star and another F-type supergiant. How did such a configuration came to existance? Or actually, never mind, let's have fun with what you gave us To imagine how would a system you described behave, I found a great tool. With it, using this data:

you can see how a system with one star 20 times heavier than the other and a planet placed in 5/6 of the distance between the stars would behave. Looks like a star-planet-moon configuration actually, where your planet is the moon. However, you obviously know, that star-planet-moon systems work on a very different scale. 

 

Now, time for a disclaimer I'm in no way any authority on astrology or cosmology. My physics knowledge isn't that great. I'm a programmer and what follows are my wild speculations backed up by common sense and basic knowledge

 

Star sizes

I'd advice to keep with more modestly sized stars. Supergiants were named like this for a reason. Our sun's radius is 1/215 of astronomical unit (source) and supergiants can have radius "from 30 to 500, or even in excess of 1,000 solar radii (R☉)". With stars placed so close together, your supergiant would a) suck the smaller star into itself rip the planet away from the smaller star and burn it like mosquito electric killer kills a mosquito.

 

So, for the rest of my post I'll assume, that the bigger star is: bigger and brighter, but not that much bigger.

 

Climate and temperatures

I'd love to see some explanations of how those models with equalized temperatures work. For me, that sounds very counter intuitive, after all, our planet is rotating, has a lot of water that stabilizes the climate, and still, we have around 100°K differences between temperatures near the equator and the poles. I'm very curious. I wonder how much water do you want to have on this planet. After all, the more water, the more stable the temperatures.

 

Day and night

With one star and a tidally locked planet, there is not day or night. There is only the light bright and dark side. However, there is another star in the system that allows there to be day/night cycle, but not like we know it. So, first some definitions I want to use:

• Equator - For this planet I think equator will be the border between the bright and dark side.
• Minor Year - time needed by the planet to circulate around the smaller star. Due to the tidal lock, it can be observed by observing the bigger star on the sky.
• Major Year - time needed for the smaller star to finish it's circle around the bigger star. Can be more or less easily observed by keeping an eye on the stars and the horizon and position of the bigger sun.
• Day/Night - depends on the visibility of the bigger star on the sky.
• Month - Well, it might not exist at all. You didn't mention a moon

 

Now, looking at the movement of the astral bodies in the simulator:

As we can see, there are 4,5 minor years per major year. Now, an interesting observation: One day = one minor year. So actually, we have a planet, where the concepts of year and day are interchangeable. Cool How long would this minor year be in comparison with our years? No idea, you can pick some reasonable value I guess. Something from a couple of Earth months to couple of Earth years.

 

The passing of days will obviously have huge impact on the life of the planet. The influence will be much greater on the dark side, as the bigger star will be the only source of energy. On the bright side the difference between day and night would be noticeable, but not that important.

 

Life on the bright side

Any life forms on this side of the planet has to be adapted to constant supply of heat and light. The plants would probably not be bound by any vegetation cycle. Unfortunately, I can't speculate much more as I don't know how much water there would be available. Important thing about the animals: they would probably not sleep like most of the animals on earth. I suspect they would utilize something like our dolphins - half-brain sleep. That would allow them to stay at least mildly active all the time, as there is no mechanism to synchronize predators with their pray, the herbivores have to be awake all the time. Only the predators at the end of the food chain would be able to allow themselves to actually sleep like we do.

 

Life on the dark side

Days and night on the dark side are very long. That means, that all life there would adapt to this cycle. Because of the little supply of warmth and light from the bigger, further star, both fauna and flora would be rather small and inconspicuous. Hibernating to survive the nights or evolving to acquire food some other way.  

 

Civilization

So, time to think about the sentient inhabitants of the planet. I assume that they are native to this world. They somehow evolved to humanoid form or not, I don't really care. If they made a civilization, here are my thoughts on it:

1. Measuring time. I think any civilization needs a way to measure time to coordinate any bigger work (unless this is hive-mind like species). Without any reasonable reference point how would they approach this? The movement of the bigger star on the sky is too slow to be precise. Maybe they would use the moon as the reference if they have any? If they don't, I think they would develop different ways of measurement in different regions. Some tribes would measure the time by observing life-cycle of some plants, other would measure it by observing a geyser or something. When they become more technologically capable, they would probably create some clocks and unify their time keeping.
2. When they reach certain point with their technology the problem of energy consumption won't be a problem at all. With constant and reliable supply of light from the smaller star, they can just flood their lands with solar panels and harvest as much energy as they want. They can utilize the solar energy even earlier than that. Take a big container of water and use huge mirrors to redirect sun and heat the thing up. With some practice and steady supply of water, you would be able to create an engine providing a steady and reliable pressure of steam to power any machine. I can see some steampunk applications right here
3. With their sun just hanging on the skies always in the same place and a compass the navigation becomes trivial on the bright side of the planet. (Assuming, that the magnetic poles are not in the same places where the hot/cold poles are). To pinpoint any location, you just need to know the height of the sun and how many degrees should there be between the compass needle and the sun, when you face it. Not sure if that would influence the civilization in any meaningful way
4. I assume the civilization would develop on the bright side of the planet. Their culture would be very interesting. I suppose that darkness would be something that most people would be terrified of, like we are terrified of losing our sight. Their religion would most definitely demonize the darkness and discourage people from colonizing the dark side. Miners would probably be considered the bravest of all men.
5. You can have a very interesting setup, if there would be two civilizations. One from the dark and one from the bright side separated by an ocean or something. Imagine their first encounters.   Not sure how the darksiders would develop yet

Well, that was a wall of text... I hope you'll find some of my thoughts interesting sorry for kind of 'hijacking' your world idea

[Zathoth]

Im writing a fantasy story set in more or less the universe of Super Mario Galaxy, for quick reference. So theres air mostly everywhere in the entire 'universe' (I haved named it the Skyverea, it is a combination of Sky Universe and Sea, very creative, I know)

 

All the planets, stars and such are pretty small compared to what we have. There will be planets in impossible and ridiculous shapes, gravity works differently so there will be lots of "walking on walls" or planets that are inside out and other weird things like that (Im handwaving most of this with "It is a different universe, the laws of physics work differently") The stars are smaller, do not bring as much heat and generally behave oddly. (They are also the source of magic), theres weird "Star Weathers" that range from the stars lowering gravity to creating zombies. "Day" and "Night" happens because the stars dim.

 

Regular weather still exist through regular clouds (or not so regular clouds)

 

Anyway the question all this is leading up to is: What would the color of the "sky" be? XD If you just stared at the void (which is actually air...) what color would you see? Would it be black because there is really no borders between atmospheres and not atmospheres because everything is all contained in an atmosphere? Would it be blue because the air scatters the light? Is there any excuses I could use for certain collections of planets to have differently colored "skies"?

[Kobold King he/him]

@Mestiv: 10/10, would read again. Honestly by this point you've poured more thought into this particular planet than even I have, considering my sole concept for this world thus far was the multicolored plant thing. It's also pretty cool to see your ideas altogether, since it seems we've both put a lot of effort into red dwarf systems and have come to a lot of the same conclusions.

 

Answering everything by topic:

 

Star Sizes: I definitely don't intend to put a planet around a supergiant; rather, what I said was a subgiant, which is a star substantially short of giant status. Very large and very luminous, but comparable to main-sequence stars and not necessarily prohibitive to life.

 

Climate and Temperatures: Here you go! I'd be lying if I said I understood everything in that pdf, so here's a link to the Wikipedia page that summarized it for me. It's controversial and disputed by some scientists, but since we won't know for sure if it's possible till we go to a red dwarf and find out, I see no problem with using the concept for science fiction.

 

And again, I have no idea how much water. Like I said, my sole idea for this planet was the multicolored plant idea--which I still intend to use somewhere, on some planet.

 

Day and Night: That is awesome and super helpful. Thanks! I fancy myself decent at exobiology, but astrometrics kicks my butt every time.

 

Life on the Bright Side:  ♪ Always look on the bright side of life... ♪ ... Ahem, sorry. I've considered sleepless creatures before as well, but I'd need to do more research on how day/night cycles affect wildlife before attempting to devise Brightside's ecosystems.

 

Life on the Dark Side: What I'd love to do is come up with a mechanism for the transfer of organic material from the bright side to the dark side, allowing for a thriving ecosystem equivalent to the deep ocean floor of Earth. If enough material gets over, I could even have large megafauna living in the dark, like the giant squid we have here.

 

One thought I had was to have some Brightside organisms migrate to the Darkside to reproduce, taking advantage of the flurries of reproducing Darkside critters to feed their young.

 

Civilization: Pretty cool thoughts there! I think the type of society here, as always, would depend on what form lifeform evolves sapience. For instance, you suggest that the demonization of the Darkside by Brightside inhabitants is almost inevitable; quite the contrary, I believe that's anthropomorphizing the inhabitants of the planet to an undue degree.

 

Consider, for instance, a race that evolved from the migratory creatures that fly to the Darkside to reproduce during the brief day. Rather than considering the other side of the planet a demonic hellscape, they might call it "The Heaven That Sleeps"; it lays dormant in the dark for a while, but then it awakes and becomes a blissful utopia that they can raise their young in.

 

Or consider a race that develops from large carnivores. Unlike we puny humans, who evolved from scrawny primates with very good reasons to be scared of the dark, a civilization derived from apex predators would have little be intrinsically scared of. If they were big enough, with keen senses of smell or hearing, then they might view the Darkside as just a particularly challenging hunting ground, even without a secondary star in the system to provide occasional light.

 

(And that's just assuming that Brightside would be the first to develop sapient life; it's equally possible that only the Darkside would give rise to anything as rational as we are, and that these creatures would view the land of eternal sun with the same fear that our medieval ancestors would have viewed a land of eternal dark.)

 

 

 

Above all, don't apologize for "hijacking" this idea! By some estimates there could be as many as 75 billion red dwarf systems in the Milky Way alone, and if even a minute percentage of those have any life at all, I'll have plenty of opportunities to develop this kind of setting in any number of ways. I can even imagine a galactic community that's almost entirely made up of races that evolved on tidally locked worlds, with species hailing from around luminous yellow suns like ours being a stark minority. And your thoughts are most definitely interesting!

[Mestiv he/him]

Oh my, megafauna on the dark side sounds sooo amazing O.O I'm struck with an image of a colossal (like 10 meter high, 50 meters wide) crustaceans crawling in the darkness, devouring all the dead bio-mass that is left after wild vegetation of those long days. Then it retreats back into the oceans, when the sun is beginning to rise again... The dark side would make a great setting for some exploration stories 

 

Thanks for linking me to this article and wikipedia page Too bad, my English isn't better than it is and I couldn't understand it 100%, but still the part I read was interesting. 

 

I admin I was wrong with the assumptions about Darkside place in the culture of the habitants, thera are many more options than I thought