Thoughts on Kerbal Kosmology

[Jonfliesgoats]

1.). We can see a gassy cloud roughly aligned with the equatorial plane of the Kerbol system.  Initially I thought this was the light of countless stars like our own Milky Way.  However, its uniform distribution around the equatorial plane makes me think we are actually seeing the remnants of the accretion disc which gave birth to our fake star system.

2.)  Celestial bodies are dense.  They are one tenth the size of RSS bodies with similar gravities.  This means that Kerbol is likely you Gr and faster burning than our sun.  It is possible that this means the outer portion of the accretion disc is not finished coalescing.

3.)  it seems there are many unknown objects large enough and radar reflective enough to be tracked by the tracking station in KSP.  Kerbin may have only recently ended its heavy bombardment period. This would also explain the large impact craters whic have not eroded away.  This also supports a young star system theory.

4.). A young, dense hot burning star would emit lots of radiation.  This explains why it's feasible for Kerbals to be autotrophs, tolerate radiation in space for extended periods of time, etc.  They evolved in a young, energy-rich star system.

I cant explain why Kerbol, as a young, dense, fast burning star does not make the planets of Kerbol orders of magnitude hotter than they are.  

Also, galaxies are visible without any magnification.  This would affect Kerbals in their view of themselves, their position within the universe etc.  

Not to mention that proximity to so many other galaxies means we have not had time for the Kerbal universe to expand to the vast scales we see IRL.  So the Kerbal universe itself may be young.

Edited October 25, 2016 by Jonfliesgoats

[NSEP]

All the stars in the sky look massive but do not produce much light for its size. Kind of strange. And the galaxy's in the sky look very dusty too.

[Gaarst]

1 hour ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

1.). We can see a gassy cloud roughly aligned with the equatorial plane of the Kerbol system.  Initially I thought this was the light of countless stars like our own Milky Way.  However, its uniform distribution around the equatorial plane makes me think we are actually seeing the remnants of the accretion disc which gave birth to our fake star system.

An accretion disk would stand a lot closer to the Kerbal sun that what you see. A protoplanetary disk would have been blown away by the early star's solar wind (young stars have stronger solar winds than older ones) long before the Kerbals era (if it didn't Kerbin and the other planets would still technically be forming by accreting materials and they would not look like what they are not, at all).

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2.)  Celestial bodies are dense.  They are one tenth the size of RSS bodies with similar gravities.  This means that Kerbol is likely you Gr and faster burning than our sun.  It is possible that this means the outer portion of the accretion disc is ont finished coalescing.

I don't see the link between planets densities and the star's activity.

Kerbin is ten times denser than Earth, a body with a diameter of 600km; in fact smaller/lighter bodies are less dense than Earth (the Solar systems dwarf planets have densities of around 2-2.5, compare that to 5.5 for Earth and 58 for Kerbin, even the gas planet Jool has a density of 4.7). These densities are just too high for planet sized objects.

Then again, the Kerbal system is old. Kerbin has liquid water, an atmosphere and evolved life, which all suggest it's billions of years old. The protoplanetary disk did its thing long ago.

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3.)  it seems there are many unknown objects large enough and radar reflective enough to be tracked by the tracking station in KSP.  Kerbin may have only recently ended its heavy bombardment period. This would also explain the large impact craters whic have not eroded away.  This also supports a young start system theory.

Timescales do not match, again. A recent heavy bombardment suggest an unstable system, hence too young for Kerbin to reach its current state: it would still be in an intense geologic and volcanic phase, similar to the early days of Earth, during the Late Heavy Bombardment. Either the craters are recent and Kerbin would not have evolved life and liquid water; or the craters are old, implying Kerbin's tectonic is non-existant (cooled core) and Kerbin's atmosphere shouldn't be there.

If Kerbin cooled extremely fast, then this would again suggest no tectonics so no magnetic field and no atmosphere.

Also, Kerbin is technically not a planet considering the large number of asteroids with similar SMAs.

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4.). A young, dense hot burning star would emit lots of radiation.  This explains why it's feasible for Kerbals to be autotrophs, tolerate radiation in space for extended periods of time, etc.  They evolved in a young, violent system around a violent star. 

The Kerbal sun is actually over three times less dense than our Sun. It also is 110 times lighter, weighing slightly over 9 MJ, making it too light to even be a brown dwarf, let alone a MS star.

Assuming the Kerbal sun's spectrum is close to our Sun as it is mainly white/yellow (spectrum centered on visible part of the spetrum), we can assume a temperature of 5800K. It's blackbody luminosity should then be about 1/7 that of the Sun. The solar irradiance at Kerbin should then be 16 times that at Earth or about 2 times that at Mercury.

Taking the solar irradiance at Kerbin to be that of the Earth (similar conditions), the Kerbal sun's luminosity should be 115 times smaller than the Sun's. It would then have a bolometric magnitude of 9.9 making it a K or M type star with surface temperatures of 3500-4000K, which means it is a red dwarf.

So depending on where you're standing, the Kerbal sun is a G (yellow) type star, a red dwarf, or a big Jupiter; and Kerbin is either burning, warmish or freezing. This contradicts special relativity.

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I cant explain why Kerbol, as a young, dense, fast burning star does not make the planets of Kerbol orders of magnitude hotter than they are.  

See above. It depends on where you are.

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Also, galaxies are visible without any magnification.  This would affect Kerbals in their view of themselves, their position within the universe etc.

Not to mention that proximity to so many other galaxies means we have not had time for ten Kerbal universe to expand to the vast scales we see IRL.  So the Kerbal universe itself may be young.

Andromeda is visible to the naked eye. And we did not realised it was a galaxy until the 1920s.

About expansion, it depends on a lot of physical stuff related to the evolution of the universe. Since we can only study one universe (if there exists others), any conclusion on that matter is guessing.

 

Conclusion: applying real world cosmology (or science in general) to the Kerbal universe doesn't work.

[adsii1970]

1 minute ago, Gaarst said:

An accretion disk would stand a lot closer to the Kerbal sun that what you see. A protoplanetary disk would have been blown away by the early star's solar wind (young stars have stronger solar winds than older ones) long before the Kerbals era (if it didn't Kerbin and the other planets would still technically be forming by accreting materials and they would not look like what they are not, at all).

I don't see the link between planets densities and the star's activity.

Kerbin is ten times denser than Earth, a body with a diameter of 600km; in fact smaller/lighter bodies are less dense than Earth (the Solar systems dwarf planets have densities of around 2-2.5, compare that to 5.5 for Earth and 58 for Kerbin, even the gas planet Jool has a density of 4.7). These densities are just too high for planet sized objects.

Then again, the Kerbal system is old. Kerbin has liquid water, an atmosphere and evolved life, which all suggest it's billions of years old. The protoplanetary disk did its thing long ago.

Timescales do not match, again. A recent heavy bombardment suggest an unstable system, hence too young for Kerbin to reach its current state: it would still be in an intense geologic and volcanic phase, similar to the early days of Earth, during the Late Heavy Bombardment. Either the craters are recent and Kerbin would not have evolved life and liquid water; or the craters are old, implying Kerbin's tectonic is non-existant (cooled core) and Kerbin's atmosphere shouldn't be there.

If Kerbin cooled extremely fast, then this would again suggest no tectonics so no magnetic field and no atmosphere.

Also, Kerbin is technically not a planet considering the large number of asteroids with similar SMAs.

The Kerbal sun is actually over three times less dense than our Sun. It also is 110 times lighter, weighing slightly over 9 MJ, making it too light to even be a brown dwarf, let alone a MS star.

Assuming the Kerbal sun's spectrum is close to our Sun as it is mainly white/yellow (spectrum centered on visible part of the spetrum), we can assume a temperature of 5800K. It's blackbody luminosity should then be about 1/7 that of the Sun. The solar irradiance at Kerbin should then be 16 times that at Earth or about 2 times that at Mercury.

Taking the solar irradiance at Kerbin to be that of the Earth (similar conditions), the Kerbal sun's luminosity should be 115 times smaller than the Sun's. It would then have a bolometric magnitude of 9.9 making it a K or M type star with surface temperatures of 3500-4000K, which means it is a red dwarf.

So depending on where you're standing, the Kerbal sun is a G (yellow) type star, a red dwarf, or a big Jupiter; and Kerbin is either burning, warmish or freezing. This contradicts special relativity.

See above. It depends on where you are.

Andromeda is visible to the naked eye. And we did not realised it was a galaxy until the 1920s.

About expansion, it depends on a lot of physical stuff related to the evolution of the universe. Since we can only study one universe (if there exists others), any conclusion on that matter is guessing.

 

Conclusion: applying real world cosmology (or science in general) to the Kerbal universe doesn't work.

To sum all of @Gaarst's comment in eight words...

"it's a game, folks. It's ONLY a game!"

[Gaarst]

3 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

To sum all of @Gaarst's comment in eight words...

"it's a game, folks. It's ONLY a game!"

I had some free time.

[Jonfliesgoats]

Gaarst, that was awesome!  

With regard to it being a game, this is one of the ways in which one has fun with a game.

So my young system idea is all wrong.  Is it safe to say Kerbin is closer to the center of their galaxy (I hereby dub the galaxy "The Gooey Way")?

Also, we have dense planets, but not dense stars?  

[adsii1970]

8 minutes ago, Gaarst said:

I had some free time.

Oh, I know... I always love your responses like this... they are educational with just a smattering of sarcasm (I think I read something between the lines like, "gee, how stupid can you be..." at some point in your response. ).

Keep up the good fight!

 

[Jonfliesgoats]

I'd much rather look ignorant and wind up more informed, even about a game, than look informed and stay ignorant.  This is part of the fun of this game.  It gets people to link up and share ideas.  I am also happy to be called out on silliness on my part as well.

Can we explain why Laythe and Kerbin are so similar despite the different distances from Kerbol?

 

 

[adsii1970]

@Jonfliesgoats - Inquiry is the beginning of knowledge.  No harm in asking questions you truly do not know the answer to. I want to apologize if I have offended you with my previous comment.

Firstly, in real astronomy, astrometrics, let's say that Jupiter had a moon, Europa, that was equivalent to Laythe (I sure hope @Gaarst isn't going to read this). There aren't any real way for this to happen, and to show you this, I will use the two probable things that could contribute to Laythe and you'll see why they cannot happen...

• Jupiter is actually a brown dwarf (this means it is hot enough to generate infra-red and invisible spectrum light, but not hot enough to generate visible light). This would provide enough heat to make a moon warm enough to support a liquid water ocean but creates another problem. That moon would not have enough light to support having blue skies. If Jupiter did give off enough light to create blue skies, it would fry that moon because its orbit is way too close (supposing we are talking about Europa) to the planet - or at this point - star, since it would no longer be classified as a planet. It would also mean at night, we would see a second sun in our sky. The Earth would never have another dark night again...
• The second possibility would be that the inner core of the moon, using Europa, has a hot molten core and much of its mantle would have to be molten too. The problem with this scenario is that the crust would be nearly too warm to support liquid water (it would evaporate whenever it hit the surface, think the volcanoes near Hawaii or any other body of water... or even Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. - this cauldron actually is evaporating the large lake that sits on top of it. What water does remain has a high salt/mineral content.
  • With the case of the Yellowstone cauldron, the water that still exists is extremely salty/full of minerals. It is a heavy water. In this scenario, this is probably the type of water that would exist.
  • The atmosphere would be very turbulent as upper layers rapidly descend because cold air does just that. Warmer air, heavy in water vapor content, rapidly rises. You'd have a lot of storm activity and clouds, thus rarely having a blue sky. Think of the cloud thickness of Venus for a good approximation.
  • Still would not have a blue sky because of the distance from Europa to the sun. At best, you might have the pre-twilight sky (supposing you do not have cloud cover).

I hate to tell you this, but Laythe simply could not happen in real life as it is in the game.

Edited October 25, 2016 by adsii1970

[Gaarst]

1 hour ago, adsii1970 said:

Oh, I know... I always love your responses like this... they are educational with just a smattering of sarcasm (I think I read something between the lines like, "gee, how stupid can you be..." at some point in your response. ).

Keep up the good fight!

I use sarcasm when I can, but often not in a derogatory way. If what I wrote sounded condescending at some point, know that this was/is not my intent at all.

1 hour ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

Gaarst, that was awesome!  

With regard to it being a game, this is one of the ways in which one has fun with a game.

So my young system idea is all wrong.  Is it safe to say Kerbin is closer to the center of their galaxy (I hereby dub the galaxy "The Gooey Way")?

Also, we have dense planets, but not dense stars?  

The position of Kerbin in its galaxy is hard to define. Looking at the skybox, there does appear to be a direction in which the galaxy appears larger. Especially, there seem to be a lot of gas clouds, which could be nebulae; large concentrations of nebulae are typical of spiral galaxies bulges. Therefore, I'd situate the Kerbin system in a rather small spiral galaxy (everything is too small, so why not galaxies?), maybe a bit closer to the centre than the Earth system is (bulge appears "taller", so it could mean it's closer).

About the dense planets, I don't know why they are so dense. Neither do I know why the Kerbin sun is so not-dense (we really need an antonym for dense), as smaller stars are typically denser than larger ones (larger are heavier, so hotter, so more radiative pressure, so things pushed outwards stronger, so less dense star, I assume).

54 minutes ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

I'd much rather look ignorant and wind up more informed, even about a game, than look informed and stay ignorant.  This is part of the fun of this game.  It gets people to link up and share ideas.  I am also happy to be called out on silliness on my part as well.

Can we explain why Laythe and Kerbin are so similar despite the different distances from Kerbol?

Being ignorant is no flaw. Being unwilling to learn is one.

My guess is that Laythe used to be a Europa-style moon, with a big layer of ice coating it. For some reason, there was a gravitational disturbance which sent it flying close to Jool; very close. So close that the gravitational pull of Jool almost ripped it apart (tidal forces). This immense strain on the planet's core could have been sufficient to heat it enough to trigger intense volcanic activity, heating the planet. The heat could have been enough to melt its ice layer, releasing gasses that formed an atmosphere.
The problem with this theory is that I have no idea of the actual number involved, especially if a major tidal event could have such effect. I know that tidal heating is a thing (tidal forces exert forces on a planets interior, heating it by friction) but I don't know if it can happen at such scales.
Io is very similar to this case (tidal forces of Jupiter and the other 3 Galilean moons heat it, giving it an intense volcanism) but it is still far from being as hot as Laythe. Though Io's tidal heating is regular, while what I described is an exceptional event, this could be enough to justify the difference, but it also means that Laythe will eventually freeze again. (Note that tidal heating is the main argument for Europa having a liquid ocean below its surface, though we're still far from having a surface ocean and a thick atmosphere)

14 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Firstly, in real astronomy, astrometrics, let's say that Jupiter had a moon, Europa, that was equivalent to Laythe (I sure hope @Gaarst isn't going to read this). There aren't any real way for this to happen, and to show you this, I will use the two probable things that could contribute to Laythe and you'll see why they cannot happen...

Funny enough, I read it, and happened to use the same example in my explanation.  

Edited October 25, 2016 by Gaarst

[adsii1970]

7 minutes ago, Gaarst said:

My guess is that Laythe used to be a Europa-style planet, with a big layer of ice coating it. For some reason, there was a gravitational disturbance which sent it flying close to Jool; very close. So close that the gravitational pull of Jool almost ripped it apart (tidal forces). This immense strain on the planet's core could have been sufficient to heat it enough to trigger intense volcanic activity, heating the planet. The heat could have been enough to melt its ice layer, releasing gasses that formed an atmosphere.

The problem with this theory is that I have no idea of the actual number involved, especially if a major tidal event could have such effect. I know that tidal heating is a thing (tidal forces exert forces on a planets interior, heating it by friction) but I don't know if it can happen at such scales.
Io is very similar to this case (tidal forces of Jupiter and the other 3 Galilean moons heat it, giving it an intense volcanism) but it is still far from being as hot as Laythe. Though Io's tidal heating is regular, while what I described is an exceptional event, this could be enough to justify the difference, but it also means that Laythe will eventually freeze again.

@Gaarst: Seems we are thinking along the same lines here.

Edited October 25, 2016 by adsii1970

[problemecium]

In my experience the "Kerbal milky way" isn't uniform at all. Panning all the way around the sky reveals a definite trend toward a thick, dense region in one direction and a dim, sparse region in the opposite direction (something I appreciated as a design detail).

[Jonfliesgoats]

Adsii, not offended at all!  I post this stuff to invite precisely this kind of feedback.  I only mention the value in public silliness to make sure others feel comfortable sharing their ideas.  By similar token, I enjoy a little jabbing input so we all feel comfortable having our ideas critiqued.  

I really like all of this stuff.

I like the idea of Laythe as a molten Europa or Enceledus.   Could Laythe's atmosphere contain some very efficient greenhouse gas in addition to oxygen?  If a very large fraction of Laythe's atmosphere is has a greenhouse gas as opposed to, say nitrogen, perhaps it could be retaining a lot of the heat from volcanism and solar heating within its atmosphere?

The problem is that the blue skies on Laythe seem to be nitrogen rich.

I doubt the numbers work to make this even plausible.

[KAL 9000]

My theory: 

Laythe is obviously very close to Jool. Thus, we can expect a lot of tidal heating. This, earlier in Laythe's history, would have led to rampant volcanism (similar to Io). As gravitational influences from the other Joolilean moons perturbed Laythe's orbit, it moved a little farther out, experienced less tidal heating, and volcanism ceased. However,when they were active, volcanoes spewed greenhouse gases such as CO₂, water vapor, and methane into Laythe's atmosphere. This means that, even though Laythe is far from Kerbol, it traps most of the heat it recieves and is warm enough to melt its icy crust. After Laythe became habitable, lithopanspermia may have spread life from Kerbin to it.