[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] On space and maps
May. 7th, 2010 11:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldMy favourite roleplaying game setting is 2300AD. A hard science-fiction setting with a very active fan base that I still participate in, it starts off as an alternate history where France stayed neutral in a Third World War fought by the rest of NATO with China against the Warsaw Pact, and accordingly ended up in a position to dominate the post-war world. The Earth greened again, civilization was restored, and in the 22nd century the French developed the stutterwarp drive which opened up the stars to humanity, notiwthstanding its peculiar limitations.
Astrography--at least astrography as known in the late 1980s when 2300AD came out--makes the Arms look like this.
Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light years away, site of the prosperous world of Tirane is well within range of stutterwarp. Beta Canum Venaticorum (27.3 light years away) and Beta Comae Berenices (29.9 light years away) form the nucleus of a prosperous cluster of stars, the "French Arm," shown in light blue on the map above, colonized mainly by Europeans. Procyon (11.5 light years away) Tau Ceti (11.9 light years away), 40 Eridani (16.5 light years away), and Epsilon Indi (11.8 light years away) form the backbone of another cluster, the "Chinese Arm" (in dark blue), extensively colonized by Asian and Latin American powers with the addition of Canada and some local aliens, all under Manchurian hegemony, that's unfortunately much less accessible than the French Arm--these stars might be closer to Sol than the French Arm stars, but there just aren't any stars conveniently located to bridge the gap between the Chinese Arm and Sol. Finally, Mu Herculis (27.4 light years away) is one of the notable stars in the American Arm (in darkest blue), colonized by the Americans and Australians, but because of a lack of stars in sufficiently convenient locations the American Arm is self-contained. (Or, more accurately, it started off as being self-contained in the game, but that's another thing.)
It turns out that the star maps of the late 1980s were profoundly limited. In the game, despite nearly four centuries of technological development, only a few brown dwarfs have been found. In actuality, it looks like brown dwarfs are--if not commoner than red dwarfs, as theory predicts but observations seem to contradict--pretty common. One of these stars was just discovered lurking closer than Tau Ceti or Epsilon Eridani.
There are almost certainly going to be other, closer brown dwarfs found closer to our solar system, perhaps even closer than the Alpha Centauri stars. Rogue planets may be commoner yet, floating sun-less deep in interstellar space. Who knows what could lie in these barely hypothesized environments. One scientist thinks that a rogue planet could be a living world. But then, with so little known about even relatively well-understood bodies like Mars--for that matter, with so relatively little know about our own homeworld--making predictions might be jumping things a bit.
I really like maps. I like knowing where I am, where I have been, where I will be. I like knowing the grand sweep of things and the minute details. I write in order to bring out details to others, to learn about new things myself, and to know my world that much better. I liked orienteering in junior high school; I like urban exploration and travel now; I can only imagine the things I'll have a chance to experience in the future. I'm truly grateful that I'm one of the lucky minority of humans to live in this age, an era when we can map the dimmest stars at the same time that we can dissect our DNA for traces of unusual ancestors. Our maps are so finely detailed yet so vast, I can hardly believe it.
A faster-than-light device called the Stutterwarp Drive allows mankind to achieve practical travel between planetary systems. Ships can usually reach a speed of 3.5 light years per day; the real limitation of the Stutterwarp drive is that it can only propel a ship up to a maximum of 7.7 light years before it needs to enter a gravity well and discharge lethal radiation that would otherwise kill the crew. Because ships need to reach a world within this distance, the effect of this limitation is the creation of lanes along which travel and commerce are conducted and along which wars are fought, the Arms mentioned above.
Astrography--at least astrography as known in the late 1980s when 2300AD came out--makes the Arms look like this.
Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light years away, site of the prosperous world of Tirane is well within range of stutterwarp. Beta Canum Venaticorum (27.3 light years away) and Beta Comae Berenices (29.9 light years away) form the nucleus of a prosperous cluster of stars, the "French Arm," shown in light blue on the map above, colonized mainly by Europeans. Procyon (11.5 light years away) Tau Ceti (11.9 light years away), 40 Eridani (16.5 light years away), and Epsilon Indi (11.8 light years away) form the backbone of another cluster, the "Chinese Arm" (in dark blue), extensively colonized by Asian and Latin American powers with the addition of Canada and some local aliens, all under Manchurian hegemony, that's unfortunately much less accessible than the French Arm--these stars might be closer to Sol than the French Arm stars, but there just aren't any stars conveniently located to bridge the gap between the Chinese Arm and Sol. Finally, Mu Herculis (27.4 light years away) is one of the notable stars in the American Arm (in darkest blue), colonized by the Americans and Australians, but because of a lack of stars in sufficiently convenient locations the American Arm is self-contained. (Or, more accurately, it started off as being self-contained in the game, but that's another thing.)
It turns out that the star maps of the late 1980s were profoundly limited. In the game, despite nearly four centuries of technological development, only a few brown dwarfs have been found. In actuality, it looks like brown dwarfs are--if not commoner than red dwarfs, as theory predicts but observations seem to contradict--pretty common. One of these stars was just discovered lurking closer than Tau Ceti or Epsilon Eridani.
Astronomers have discovered the closest new star to us that’s been spotted in 63 years. Though “star” might be a stretch, depending upon whom you ask.
The new find, UGPS 0722-05, is less than 10 light years from here. But sky-watchers missed it for so long because it’s a brown dwarf, a member of the murky class of celestial objects that linger between gas giant planets and low-mass stars. Brown dwarfs have so little mass that they never get hot enough to sustain the nuclear fusion reactions that power stars like the sun. Still, they do shine, because they glow from the heat of their formation, then cool and fade [New Scientist]. This dwarf’s temperature is somewhere between 266 and 446 degrees Fahrenheit, making it the coldest scientists have even seen. With its minimal activity, the brown dwarf gives off just 0.000026 percent the amount of light that our sun does.
There are almost certainly going to be other, closer brown dwarfs found closer to our solar system, perhaps even closer than the Alpha Centauri stars. Rogue planets may be commoner yet, floating sun-less deep in interstellar space. Who knows what could lie in these barely hypothesized environments. One scientist thinks that a rogue planet could be a living world. But then, with so little known about even relatively well-understood bodies like Mars--for that matter, with so relatively little know about our own homeworld--making predictions might be jumping things a bit.
I really like maps. I like knowing where I am, where I have been, where I will be. I like knowing the grand sweep of things and the minute details. I write in order to bring out details to others, to learn about new things myself, and to know my world that much better. I liked orienteering in junior high school; I like urban exploration and travel now; I can only imagine the things I'll have a chance to experience in the future. I'm truly grateful that I'm one of the lucky minority of humans to live in this age, an era when we can map the dimmest stars at the same time that we can dissect our DNA for traces of unusual ancestors. Our maps are so finely detailed yet so vast, I can hardly believe it.
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