[HN Gopher] Hurried Thoughts: You're Wrong About Tidal-Locking
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Hurried Thoughts: You're Wrong About Tidal-Locking
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 185 points
Date : 2024-03-07 14:08 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (worldbuildingpasta.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (worldbuildingpasta.blogspot.com)
| mistercow wrote:
| This seems to offer an interesting (partial) candidate for the
| Great Filter. What if there are tons of advanced civilizations on
| tidally locked planets orbiting red dwarfs, who have never
| reached for the stars, because they simply can't see them?
|
| Or rather, they can see them only once they've developed the
| technology to explore a side of the planet which they're
| extremely poorly adapted for. Imagine if we had only been able to
| even begin to study astronomy through polar expeditions, for
| example.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Not having celestial navigation would also make such
| exploration more difficult.
| mistercow wrote:
| Yeah, although given that ancient humans figured that out,
| maybe it wouldn't take an advanced civilization very long.
| That's probably the biggest flaw with the idea. Like, imagine
| a civilization at our stage, minus the stuff we learned by
| having a night sky (no universal gravitation; computers and
| radio, but no GPS; quantum physics but no general relativity,
| and so on). Now they manage to voyage into the cold, dark
| night. How quickly can they catch up? Decades maybe, but
| probably not centuries.
|
| I think the other question is cultural. How much do they
| _care_ about space, when even the basic concept is new and
| alien, and studying it is very expensive?
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I'd note that navigation was most important on oceans while
| terrestrial navigation relied on landmarks and maps.
|
| I wonder though how much exploration helped lead to an
| advanced civilization. The exchange of ideas with different
| cultures was crucial as was the necessity to develop the
| technologies for exploration beyond navigation alone. It
| wasn't until we broadly navigated the planet that we
| advanced so rapidly after tens of thousands of years of
| relatively isolated stagnation.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I have a theory that Western culture developed relatively
| quickly because the geography is basically easily-
| farmable land around an inland sea with plenty of islands
| which is easy to navigate and explore.
|
| The Egyptians and the Phoenicians lacked the easily
| farmable land. Greece was fertile but a little arid,
| Northern Europe was harsher and riskier, but Rome was in
| a perfect sweet spot.
|
| On the other side of the world China had the farmland but
| not the inland sea, so there was less motivation for sea-
| borne trade and exploration.
|
| So it all started with a tradition that required basic
| materials science, knowledge of the weather, currents,
| and seasons, navigation by the sky, and the politics of
| war and trade across large distances.
|
| And it didn't stop until we had explored the entire
| planet and taken the first steps into space.
|
| In between we had to learn about time, navigation, and
| planetary weather patterns, how to build and power better
| ships, and more complex politics.
|
| It seems like a very natural progression.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| A few notes -
|
| Western culture didn't develop very quickly - the
| geography had humans for tens of thousands of years
| before culture developed quickly. Other parts of the
| world actually developed relatively advanced
| civilizations long before Europe.
|
| I think once it began to develop it developed quickly
| partially due to the geography, but it was also through
| trade with the Middle East and Asia, which were the
| sources of a lot of the technology bootstrap priming
| Europe to develop rapidly. It's indisputable that once
| the ball really began rolling Europe brought us to the
| modern age rapidly. But I'm dubious of the geography
| argument personally since it was so late in developing
| relative to other societies, including those in the
| americas.
|
| China actually was an advanced maritime society, with
| expeditions across most of the world including to the
| Americas. In fact in the 1400s China was the world's most
| powerful navy.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_history_of_China
| Bene592 wrote:
| China had the sea between China and Japan, and they had
| some nice oceangoing ships1.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_(ship)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > the stuff we learned by having a night sky
|
| You are forgetting stuff like platonic modeling of the real
| world, testing hypothesis on the basis of their predictive
| values, and integrating the smart people as a community
| where they exchange ideas.
|
| We learned all of those by observing the sky.
|
| Of course, there are probably other ways to learn it. But
| it's not clear at all how viable they are or how long they
| would take.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| We really didn't even care about space, until we decided
| spaceflight might lead to easier control of the strings of
| power through use of icbms or even manned space stations.
| Then it became an appreciable fraction of our GDP
| overnight, from no polling of voters only under the
| pressure of our unelected military authority.
| mistercow wrote:
| For space exploration sure, but astronomy was a pretty
| big deal for centuries before space flight was a remote
| possibility.
|
| But I think the fact that the stars are staring you in
| the face on a regular basis when you look up has to have
| been a big influence there. For our hypothetical tidally
| locked culture, the stars would be, to most people, more
| akin to the cosmic microwave background. They'd be
| something scientists could take pictures of and form
| theories about, but totally removed from everyday
| experience.
| neaden wrote:
| On the other hand, having the sun as a fixed point seems like
| it could make it much easier, presumably navigation would be
| based around that.
| wolfram74 wrote:
| If the planet had a decent magnetic field, it might actually
| be quite easy to navigate. A sextant would get you "solar
| latitude" as it were (the angle of the sun relative to the
| horizon defines a circle), and coupled with magnetic
| orientation I think that would narrow it down to one of four
| points on the day side of the planet (where the field lines
| have a given angle with the radius of the previously defined
| circle). Given even crude object permanence I think that
| should fix your position pretty well.
| amluto wrote:
| On the night side, you could get a decent idea of your
| absolute position by observing the stars, just like how you
| can do this on Earth if you have a good clock. On a tidally
| locked planet, your clock doesn't need to be very good.
|
| I imagine that a similar if somewhat more complex trick
| works on the day side if there's a visible moon.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| The stars would still rotate around the planet, but the
| rotation would be that of the planet rotating around its
| star.
|
| So one would need timekeeping to track where you are in
| that cycle.
| amluto wrote:
| Indeed, but process is quite a bit slower, so you could
| likely get away with a worse clock.
| IntrepidWorm wrote:
| Since the cycle of stellar observation repeats each solar
| year, the observation would itself be a method of time
| keeping. One would need only to track the azimuth of a
| series of regularly positioned star constellations to
| determine time, and from there one could then ascertain
| location.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Do tidally locked planets typically have a magnetic field?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| If the sun is always in the same place it is easy to figure
| out how far you are away from the center. If the planet is so
| lucky to have a dipolar magnetic field you can get a 2-d
| position, and it would be easier than being on Earth because
| you don't need an accurate clock the way you do on Earth:
|
| https://www.destination-innovation.com/john-harrison-the-
| mas...
|
| ... assuming of course you can see the sun which might be
| trouble when you get sunwards (too many clouds)
| Bene592 wrote:
| A planet that Spins only once in one of its years probably
| isn't dipolar
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Mercury has a low rotation rate but it does have a weak
| magnetic field: see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury%27s_magnetic_field
|
| I'm not so sure how easy it is to make a compass that
| works on a weaker field.
| tzs wrote:
| A tidal locked planet is still rotating, just a lot slower
| than more "normal" planets, so maybe you could use some of
| the effects of the rotation to help figure out position?
|
| For example set up a Foucault pendulum and observe it long
| enough to determine the angular speed of its precession. From
| that you can determine your latitude. There will be only two
| points on the surface of your planet that have that latitude
| and have your sun in the right place.
| Galaxeblaffer wrote:
| Very interesting idea ! I do wonder though if sufficiently
| complex life would ever evolve in an almost completely stable
| climate.
| johngossman wrote:
| The tropics have more life and a more stable climate than the
| temperate regions. They also are warmer, so that's not an
| argument that a stable climate is more amenable to life, but
| at least a hint it isn't an overriding factor. I also realize
| that may not say much about the origin of complex life. Just
| trying to think of examples.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Not to forget deep sea is also very stable in temperature.
| Being function of denseness of water.
| johngossman wrote:
| An even more extreme version of this is life in the seas under
| an ice world like Europa.
| bombcar wrote:
| If we were tidally locked, and were about where we are now or a
| few centuries ago, there'd be tons of people trying to explore
| the "dark side of Earth" and they'd see the stars.
| rini17 wrote:
| They likely don't have night vision, so they would need to
| use instruments. They can only discover stars (perhaps except
| few brightest ones) after invention of photography.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| I think it's more likely that the interesting life would
| evolve from organisms that exist on the fringe and can
| survive and migrate to either side.
| bluGill wrote:
| Do they have fire? Clouds mean they already can adjust to
| different light levels - at least some. A fire lit torch is
| obvious if you have fire.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| "Night vision" is not a special binary adaptation. It's not
| as if humans have exemplary might vision either, and we see
| LOTS of stars in a dark sky. Plus there are lots of diurnal
| reasons to not be helpless in low light, like tree cover
| and caves.
| bombcar wrote:
| They'd likely have discovered caves or roofs at some point
| - and have some ability to see in dimmer light.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Hot take: the Great Filter is the fact that we're actually
| alone as an intelligent species in the universe.
|
| Occam's Razor and all that.
| mistercow wrote:
| That's not an explanation. It's a restatement of what the
| great filter is trying to explain.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Occam's Razor says that we don't see any aliens because
| none actually ever exist.
|
| Anything else is, alas, wishful thinking.
| root_axis wrote:
| Occam's Razor would suggest we just don't have the
| technology to detect them, you'd need extra reasoning to
| explain why earth is unique among thousands of trillions
| of planets.
| mistercow wrote:
| Again, that's not an explanation. An explanation would
| explain _why_ aliens don't exist despite apparently ample
| opportunities for them to.
| sfink wrote:
| I don't think Occam's Razor is that helpful in explaining
| why I can't find my glasses in a pitch black room. A
| better explanation is that it's dark. There may well be
| other good reasons, but Occam's Razor says to stick with
| it being dark.
|
| Other stars are a long ways away, and intelligence-
| generated signals mostly dissipate into the cube of that
| distance. Also, the vast majority of stars are far enough
| away that intelligent life would have had to evolve a lot
| sooner in order for the light to have already reached us.
| Occam's Razor is going to look at those before working
| out the more complicated questions of how common life and
| intelligence actually are.
| solardev wrote:
| Maybe the _actually_ intelligent species created this
| universe as a zoo to keep us safely tucked away so we don 't
| eat their kids. Then they had some massive layoffs and
| couldn't afford faster than light vacations for a while :(
| etskinner wrote:
| That doesn't really follow Occam's Razor. That would require
| assuming that we're special in being the only planet/solar
| system/galaxy where life happened, even though the conditions
| are right in lots of places
| Jerrrry wrote:
| Occam would presume, as most do, that we are the first
| sufficiently advanced, detectable, species to leave the
| gravitational well we were born in, and the first in the
| observable universe, so far.
|
| There is more to the universe than what we can observe, our
| light cone is a fraction of the expected higher bound,
| assuming a finite universe.
|
| We are also one of the first generation of planets with heavy
| elements - decreasing the odds of a species originating
| before us.
|
| But the universe will be around for a long, long time;
|
| Far, far longer than it has so far. We may be the first, but
| to assume a filter at this point is an anthropomorphic bias
| so ingrained it's nearly impossible to cognitively self-
| reflect on.
| throwanem wrote:
| 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe, 100 billion
| stars just in this galaxy, and this one star among those
| quadrillions being the only one with intelligent life - this
| by you is the _simplest_ explanation?
| bluGill wrote:
| Are we the only intelligent life or not. Both Yes and No
| answers would be astonishing, though for different reasons.
|
| The question however is unknowable: the speed of light
| compared to the size of the universe is just too slow. We
| have every reason to believe most intelligent species will
| rise, develop, and die off (as their star dies!) and we
| never find out about them - either the signals never reach
| us before our star dies, or they have already passed us by.
| WithinReason wrote:
| It would just mean that life is improbable, which is
| perfectly plausible.
| throwanem wrote:
| Plausible, sure, but such a vast improbability itself
| requires what would have to be quite a complex
| explanation.
| WithinReason wrote:
| Why? It could be simply statistically unlikely, nothing
| complex about it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
| lynx23 wrote:
| That sounds like a Greg Egan book yet to be written :-) I
| discovered that it is real fun to think about these things when
| I read Incandescence. BTW, I am taking recommendations for
| books similar to that one, it appears I love that subgenre.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| We've had to go up to snowy, oxygen depleted mountaintops to
| study our own astronomy too. For a while even such study was
| deemed heretical by the church. There are many potential
| filters to science. Many still in place with our own species
| today, even.
| klyrs wrote:
| Life is attracted to gradients; I would expect the most
| interesting behavior at the twilit ring.
| sfink wrote:
| But the article's main point is that the
| intermediates/gradients in heat and moisture are not
| necessarily where you expect them to be. If you have a point
| heat source on one side of an enclosed volume--a big box, say
| --then in a vacuum the most "interesting" area is halfway
| between that point and the far wall. But if there's a gas or
| liquid in the box, convection will produce a flow where the
| interesting regions are scattered around and that midway
| point is probably one of the less interesting spots.
|
| Life is also attracted to energy. Even if it started in the
| twilit ring, it would compete to fill the most insolated
| areas, and would be lushest there.
|
| I think it's more like life is attracted to the volume of
| flow. A gradient is what drives the flow, but the flow has
| velocity and so sums up the gradient over a history of
| motion.
| taeric wrote:
| Very fun article. I don't feel that I was "wrong" going in, as I
| had no real concept of most of this. I was definitely ignorant of
| a lot of scenarios, though.
|
| In particular, I knew the moon was tidally locked to the earth;
| but that was about as far as my thinking on that went. I'd
| somewhat assume that the moon is "swelled" towards the earth, but
| maybe not because then the sun would break the lock? The article
| covers that the general variables involved with moon orbits
| largely precludes this, I think.
|
| Would be a lot of fun to have a VR experience that lets you see
| some of this from the different perspectives.
| solardev wrote:
| Don't know about VR, but Space Engine on Steam seems to have
| tidally locked planets...
|
| https://forum.spaceengine.org/viewtopic.php?t=206
| taeric wrote:
| I doubted what I'm asking for exists, yet. Basically a "hands
| on" experience in the latest simulations we know. Always fun
| to see others are already there working on a lot of this.
| jrd79 wrote:
| Is it possible to collect actual observations to confirm or deny
| the results of this modeling? A key part of any well formed
| scientific hypothesis is that it can be validated or disproved by
| real world experimentation or observation (falsifiable). Where
| will that data come from in this case? Computer models are an
| important part of science, but if they can't be validated against
| data, what's the point?
| johngossman wrote:
| One of the references has a section on Implications for
| Observations of exoplanets.
|
| https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aa9f1f/...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It seems quite falsifiable. We Just need to visit or image
| several hundred tidally locked planets in the habitable zone.
|
| Also, theory and models still have value in the absence of
| experimental data. They can inform your decisions on what
| experiments to run! They can also inform your decision on how
| to behave in the absence of data and validated models.
| johngossman wrote:
| Count me as wrong. One of the things I learned about weather is
| that the winter cold is largely an effect of surface heat
| radiating into the sky at night. The paper indicates that
| atmospheric circulation is enough to compensate for that and keep
| the dark side warm. Not a climatologist: but how do you explain
| the Earth's poles then? One of the charts shows the dayside
| average at 300K and night at 250K. That second number is warmer
| than our Arctic in winter.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >One of the things I learned about weather is that the winter
| cold is largely an effect of surface heat radiating into the
| sky at night.
|
| I wouldnt say "largely". My understanding is that the hours of
| daylight is more significant than hours of night, though
| obviously related. A cursory review seems to indicate that
| daytime flux at the surface is on the order of +250 W/m^2,
| whereas nighttime flux is much lower ~ -50 W/m^2
| o11c wrote:
| Hm, but daytime flux is highly angle-dependent, whereas
| nighttime flux is angle-independent ...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Another way to think about it is that radiative surface
| cooling isnt just at night. a black body radiates
| continuously 24 hours a day.
|
| The only thing that changes throughout the day is the
| amount if inbound solar flux.
| Jerrrry wrote:
| The poles receive sunlight at a near 90 degree angle, ignoring
| the axial tilt.
|
| Direct sunlight vs. spread over an area.
| throwuwu wrote:
| On a tidally locked planet the polar region is effectively the
| terminator line. There is also a greatly reduced Coriolis
| effect due to the very slow rotation. The insolation of the day
| side is a lot higher as mentioned in the article and is
| continuous rather than intermittent. All of that would lead to
| increased convection. Imagine the difference between a kettle
| being heated on a burner vs a kettle being heated by a
| blowtorch that rotates around it. The behaviour of the fluid in
| each will be quite different. Not a perfect model by any
| stretch of the imagination but maybe more intuitive.
| ak217 wrote:
| This is a fascinating analysis, but it doesn't mention the
| magnetosphere. I'm an amateur, but my understanding is that tidal
| locking means effectively no rotation with respect to the aspect
| of the solar wind. No rotation means no coriolis. No coriolis
| means no dynamo. No dynamo means no magnetic field to protect the
| planet. No magnetic field means the solar wind will strip the
| atmosphere, no?
| hlava wrote:
| Well, Venus doesn't generate its magnetic field via geodynamo.
| Instead, it has some sort of weak magnetosphere induced by the
| interaction of the solar wind with the planet's ionosphere.
| Also even without this magnetic field, I guess the volatile
| processes on the surface are enough to keep the atmosphere
| going.
| dakr wrote:
| I was also wondering about the stellar wind stripping away the
| atmosphere. Planets close enough to their stars to be tidally
| locked will experience more stellar wind than those farther
| away and dwarf stars have more flare events than stars like our
| sun does, exacerbating the problem (plus flares can release a
| lot of high energy photons, which can break apart structures
| like DNA).
| sfink wrote:
| Yeah, that seems to be the elephant in the room. It's great
| that planets tidally locked to a red dwarf can block the heat
| with clouds, and mix the heat around with their atmosphere and
| ocean. But if being stuck up against a star means their
| atmosphere will be stripped off, then there will be neither
| clouds nor wind to do any good.
|
| Then again: Mercury has a dynamo-generated magnetic field, yet
| has the thinnest atmosphere of all of our planets[1]. Venus
| does not have a dynamo-generated magnetic field[2], yet has an
| extremely thick atmosphere. So it's not totally cut and dried.
|
| And there's of course the possibility of life in subsurface
| water. If the atmosphere were stripped, must the planet end up
| dry? Subsurface oceans can still mix the heat around. It could
| be underneath crust or ice (though the low atmospheric pressure
| would probably eliminate any ice near the top, so if it's ice
| it's probably underneath a crusty layer).
|
| Could tidal forces themselves drag enough magma around to
| generate a magnetic field good enough for shielding? The
| Earth's magnetic field from ocean tides is 20000 times weaker
| than the main one[3], but that's based on ions dissolved in
| water pulled by a relatively weak tidal force. What's a few
| orders of magnitude between friends?
|
| 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-
| sci...
|
| 2. Venus has a small induced magnetosphere from solar wind
| hitting the ionosphere, but that's probably something that
| would lead to more loss, not less?
|
| 3. https://www.sciencealert.com/esa-swarm-satellite-map-
| ocean-t...
| adrynile wrote:
| i thought this was about the new DJ locks Tidal (the lame music
| service) put up. this is much more interesting :)
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| I wonder if it's like Spotify's new AI DJ.
|
| Which I listened to for only 10s of minutes before it played a
| type of song completely unlike anything I'd ever listened to
| and would never listen to, at which point I was like "nope!"
| and I have no intent of trying it again.
|
| I also don't care for DJ chatter, so didn't like that, but if
| it helped me find more tracks similar to what I was listening
| to, I could live with it.
|
| What I want from my music streaming is a little bit of variety
| on what I already listen to. Essentially a huge shuffle list
| with occasional new tracks I can up or downvote, further
| training it on what kind of music I like.
| risenshinetech wrote:
| No you didn't. You just saw the worlds tidal and locking and
| figured you would make a cute comment about something clearly
| unrelated.
| FranOntanaya wrote:
| I do remember Earth exceptionalism being pervasive, from the
| first satellite views of Mars up till maybe Galileo's pictures of
| Europa.
|
| Even today still get that feeling when it comes to the topic of
| liquid water, where people will point at the lack of meaningful
| atmospheres and declare places like Mars or any other body
| holding ices as too different to not be dry, when you just need
| the right ground temperature gradient and some trapped ice.
| bluGill wrote:
| We don't really know what life requires. We know that earth has
| life. We have insufficient evidence for anyplace else (there is
| some evidence of life in our solar system but it could have
| been life that escaped our orbit by chance, or just
| contaminated sensors). All we have for sure is life exists on
| earth, so we know life exists on earth.
|
| Wikipedia has a list of other chemistries that could maybe
| support life, but we don't know if they do in the universe or
| not. We know that the basics of life on earth (water, carbon)
| are very common in the universe, and so there is no reason to
| think that life as we know it should be rare - but we also have
| no evidence of life elsewhere (mostly because we don't even
| have the ability to see evidence if it exists - the universe is
| large and we can't detect the important things even a few light
| years away)
| verisimi wrote:
| > I just figured it'd be nice to have a single relatively short
| place to address the most common myths about tidal-locked
| planets, and particularly their climate, for easy reference.
|
| Well that's nice and all, but this sort of explanation is hard to
| take! How can one verify that whatever-it-is about tidally locked
| planets, is not also a myth?
|
| Sure, these might be better set of guesses and assumptions, but
| it still cannot debunk myths.
|
| To see what I mean, I can debunk the idea that the gods live on
| top of Mount Olympus by climbing the mountain and checking. I
| can't check any of these potentially valid deductions. In fact,
| he could make the exact opposite points, and I would have no
| idea. None of us would.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| If someone trusted the old speculative models, they can choose
| to update to the new speculative models.
|
| If someone doesn't want to update their myth/model, who cares?
| Consensus and alignment don't matter.
|
| Even if you're wrong and you know it, there's no reason that
| should stop you from writing fiction the way you want.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I'm interested in that six image chart. The insolation seems
| _high_.
| causal wrote:
| What an incredible blog. The pricing list on the left is
| particularly great - "want me to design a world for you? Here's a
| feature menu"
| causal wrote:
| Fun to imagine how a tidally-locked civilization would grow up
| seeing a lot more symmetry in their environment than we do, and
| how their myths might spring up as a result.
|
| Also funny to imagine their scientists dismissing Earth as
| possibly habitable- "spinning around and around like that would
| result in impossibly complex weather systems - no way that's
| stable enough to sustain life!"
| rob74 wrote:
| What would be fascinating is imagining how the permanent
| daytime would influence their perception of time. The day is
| after all the fundamental unit of all human timekeeping, along
| with the seasons, and a tidally locked planet would have none
| of those. Maybe, if they are lucky, a moon big enough to be
| visible during daytime?
| causal wrote:
| Yeah! Also the mystery that the night-side of the planet
| would hold. If permanent cloud-cover for the day side holds
| true, then star-filled skies might just be a legend brought
| back by those who braved the darkness and lived to tell about
| it.
| mangamadaiyan wrote:
| Interesting parallels to Asimov's "Nightfall" there!
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| "Can a tidally locked planet have a moon" is a fascinating
| newtonian physics problem- I am thoroughly nerd sniped
| Terr_ wrote:
| In some cases they might also observe the "fixed" stars.
| (Depends on their habitat zone, atmospheric composition and
| weather, what kind of eyes they evolve, etc.)
|
| If so, they could easily measure "one year", and possibly
| subdivide it further, based on either consistent angle-
| measurements or roughly-similar chunks based on designating
| constellations and when they vanish or reappear.
| bilsbie wrote:
| That's great news. How cool it would be to visit such a planet.
| egberts1 wrote:
| Aw man, "tidality" is yet another variable that needs to be added
| on to the Drake Equation.
|
| (The Drake equation is a probabilistic argument used to estimate
| the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial
| civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
| syncsynchalt wrote:
| Covered in either n_e, f_i, or f_c I would think, depending on
| which of the three you're concerned that tides[1] or being
| tidally-locked would affect.
|
| [1] I mention tides because there are hypotheses that the
| presence of luna greatly contributed to abiogenesis and/or the
| mechanism by which life first left the oceans.
| mlhpdx wrote:
| I like this refreshed model of the "eyeball" planet -- perfect,
| endless beam reach sailing.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| BTW, if the page author happens to be reading this. (loved the
| article BTW)
|
| Your header image Screenshot_15.png is 21/2 megs in size which is
| pretty brutal on slower connections or for those with data costs.
| Plus it causes it to load a lot less snappily even on a decent
| connection. It is served in a fixed width 827px container yet is
| 1902px in size. Given the content (a simulated planet with fuzzy
| content) extra detail for HD isn't super useful and png will not
| compress well. Allowing for a little extra width for later
| retheming and then recompressing as jpeg... $
| convert Screenshot_15.png -scale 1240x Screenshot_15_1240.png
| $ ~/hg/mozjpeg/cjpeg Screenshot_15_1240.png >
| Screenshot_15_1240.jpeg $ ls -l Screenshot_15_1240.jpeg
| -rw-r--r-- 1 nemo nemo 65870 Mar 7 13:55 Screenshot_15_1240.jpeg
|
| 2.6% the size of the original.
| kakkun wrote:
| Also, there are some font size inconsistencies in the main body
| that should be looked into.
| wiredfool wrote:
| My bank has a similarly sized png as the texture background of
| their pages, and sometimes it visibly, slowly, loads fresh on
| each page you go through.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| You're doing God's work. Thank you for caring.
| tux1968 wrote:
| You might want to check out a large-image blocker for your
| browser, like this one for Firefox:
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/large-image-b...
| Razengan wrote:
| When I first played Monkey Island, the thing I oddly loved a lot
| about its world-setting was how some islands were perpetually in
| night and others in day.
|
| Of course that was a technical limitation and not an intended
| feature of the setting, but I always wondered how such a world
| might be possible.
|
| Now I have the answer. :)
| 867-5309 wrote:
| imagine what tidal locking might do to the subterranean layers of
| a planet, compared to Earth's isotropic rotisserie
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(page generated 2024-03-07 23:00 UTC)