Laythe Is Physically Impossible

[IcarusBen]

Before I begin this thread, I would like to state that I know this is a game, but that doesn't exempt it from being unrealistic when so many other things are realistic. Laythe is physically impossible.

To begin with, the thermometer states that it is 5 degrees on Laythe, but considering the distance from the sun, that's extremely unlikely. The reason for this isn't so much the distance from the sun, but the atmosphere. The KSP wiki says that Laythe has a pure oxygen atmosphere. Oxygen doesn't trap heat very well. In order for Laythe to have a snowball's chance in a CAT scanner of getting up to 5 degrees, you'd need more of an atmosphere similar to Venus, not one similar to Earth's. Not only that, but planets have a really low chance of an oxygen atmosphere unless there is any life. Do you see any life on Laythe? No, meaning that Laythe is truly a very rare instance. Plus, even if there is any life on Laythe, most life needs a warmer temperature than 5 degrees. Overall, Laythe fails in all categories of possibility. I hope you are enlightened by this post.

[andrewas]

The thermometer readings are placeholders, don't pay them much attention.

Atmospheric compositions are currently guesswork, and all that the wiki says is that the atmosphere contains oxygen, since jet engines work there. Also, Laythe is the innermost moon of Jool and may be heated by Jool, or it may be heated by tidal action in the same way as Io, though not to the same extent.

As for the temperature needed by life -- life on Earth prefers warmer temperatures becaue life on Earth is adapted to Earth. Life on Laythe will be adapted for conditions there.

[Fractal_UK]

It's not so unreasonable actually, first of all, there is nothing to suggest that Laythe's atmosphere is pure oxygen, the wiki merely states that oxygen is present in the atmosphere, most likely this would be along with nitrogen and carbon dioxide. You are right to suggest that oxygen would almost certainly be the result of life but this life could be extremely simple, algae in the oceans for example.

The temperature is not particularly unreasonable either, the solar insolation may be far lower at Jool than at Kerbin but tidal heating would be a significant factor due to the proximity to Jool and the orbital resonance with Vall and Tylo. Volcanic activity would most likely be extensive on the moon but that could be positive for any lifeforms there. Tidal heating of the core which drives this volcanism could generate a powerful magnetic field which would help to protect life forms from the intense radiation that would be trapped in Jool's magnetosphere. Indeed, this radiation would probably be the greatest danger to life on Laythe though a wide range of values are plausible. The atmosphere would also help shield life on the surface from this radiation.

[NovaSilisko]

There is already a thread on this exact subject http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/28451-Could-Laythe-actually-exist-with-real-physics , let's just keep it to that one for the sake of tidiness.

[drakesdoom]

When considering radiation remember that liquids are the best radiation shields in existence. So even if the surface was completely barren and glowed in the dark 6 feet under the water would bring you back to standard background levels.

[IcarusBen]

As for Fractal: Hm... Well, nitrogen doesn't trap heat well either, and if there was enough carbon dioxide to trap extensive amounts of heat, then it could get too hot, thus making the 5 degree temperature again inaccurate. However, I am ignoring types of life like cyanobacteria and extremophiles. Sorry bout that. The oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere the only way jet engines could work, and if the atmosphere had a large majority of CO2, then jet engines wouldn't work. Also, do you see any volcanoes on Laythe? No? Most non-geologically dead planets/moons have volcanoes, especially those with volcanic activity. However, yes, plate tectonics and core heating could generate enough of a magnetic field to support life.

To you Andrewas, I think that the temperature readings aren't fully placeholders, because Squad did write each one down and other planets have a reasonable temperature for their location. So, you're statement is slightly rendered moot.

[EDIT]

To Nova, I didn't know about the thread, sorry. And for drake, you have to remember that the water would be irradiated because of the radiation from Jool and other planets unless there is a magnetic shield field.

Edited May 14, 2013 by Icarus_Vice
Because someone posted the exact moment I did.

[Fractal_UK]

To be fair, I don't see significant terrain features outside of a very few specific locations anywhere in the solar system so I don't think the fact that Laythe presently doesn't have any volcanos as a sign that that is the way that the planet will exist once the game has been expanded to have richer and more developed planets. I mean, it's implausible that there is no sign of Kerbal civilisation on Kerbin other than a space centre and a runway but that doesn't mean that it isn't there, it will be there eventually and until then, we just have to go with it and use a bit of imagination. The terrain on Laythe is certainly quite rugged (my colonisation efforts have been hampered by the need to find reasonably flat level ground), the mountanous landscape could be an indicator of plate tectonics. The archipelago style land could also indicate this.

Carbon dioxide wouldn't have to be significant in the atmopshere, with tidal heating, I doubt it would have to be much, if any, higher than Earth's concentration to keep the planet at those kinds of temperatures. I simply suspect that carbon dioxide exists in the atmosphere because primordial carbon dioxide and life represents the most likely source of all that free oxygen in the atmosphere.

[Sof]

A: Thermometers don't work yet

[NovaSilisko]

The KSP wiki says that Laythe has a pure oxygen atmosphere.

This is incorrect. The wiki is 99% fan-driven. My general idea for laythe's atmosphere is about 15% oxygen (kerbal equivalent of course), the remainder being some form of strong greenhouse gas produced by volcanoes, which in turn are produced by the same mechanisms that produce Io's volcanos (to be added)

As for the temperature, as has been said, the temperature model isn't done yet. The temperatures for planets are currently set in a curve based on altitude (if they have an atmosphere), but aren't in any real-world unit. Kerbin has a similar problem, the temperature is the same at the equator as at the poles.

Edited May 15, 2013 by NovaSilisko

[lobsterbark]

Of course there is also the problem that Laythe appears to have Ice at its poles.

[NovaSilisko]

That was mostly a design decision, to give some easier places to land since they're completely flat.

[IcarusBen]

Well, let's see if we can back up a bit here.

To Fractal(again): I always thought that Kerbals lived underground but then I realized that KSP is in early alpha. As for the rest of you, you have to understand, most of my information about KSP comes from playing it and reading it on the wiki. As such, when I read that Laythe had an oxygen atmosphere, I believed it. I had no knowledge of tidal heating(my fault, sorry) and personally, geology is not my strong suit. I'm better with biology and the history of life. As such, sorry for not double-checking my facts. Unless someone's got something else to say, goodbye.

[Fractal_UK]

Well, you were right in so far as that Oxygen is present in the atmosphere in fairly significant quantities and indeed that life is a strong candidate for producing this. For some of these things, we can only really speculate at this point anyway. We know that a gas giant with a moon with these conditions could theoretically form but we have no idea whether it would in practice. It's difficult to say what kind of environments the primordial behaviour of gas giants tends to produce on their moons without a far larger sample size than we presently have.

Also, I too was under the impression that the temperature reading was supposed to be at least somewhat meaningful.

[IcarusBen]

Thanks, Fractal. Finally, physics I don't understand has finally helped me somewhat prove a point, while at the same time disproving it. I is Hapie!

[Brotoro]

Before I begin this thread, I would like to state that I know this is a game, but that doesn't exempt it from being unrealistic when so many other things are realistic. Laythe is physically impossible...

The thing about Laythe that makes it physically impossible for it to naturally exist in our universe is its density, which is far greater than that of any known element. But most of the bodies in the Kerbol system suffer from this same problem, so apparently the universe the kerbals live in allows for a super-dense state of matter (perhaps some form of quark matter) and there is some of this in the cores of these overly-dense planets and moons. But given that super-dense state of matter, I don't see any problem with Laythe existing.

Tidal friction (because of interaction with Vall and Tylo and Jool) can keep it plenty warm. Also, being volcanic, there's no reason the atmosphere couldn't contain carbon dioxide to aid in a greenhouse effect. Although we don't see any active volcanoes, most of them could be under the sea.

Some of Laythe's heating must come from the sun because there is enough difference between the poles and the lower latitudes for ice to form at the poles. And the rest of the planet being near the freezing point will allow temperatures to easily drop a little below freezing point at night, so any water that gets into the cracks in the surface rocks will break those suckers apart as it freezes...no wonder Laythe has all that sand at lower elevations. And if the oceans contain some ammonia as well as water, the freezing temperature of the oceans could be considerably below 0 degrees C.

I don't think the atmosphere is a stretch at all. Laythe's surface gravity is five times greater than any of Jupiter's moons or Titan (because of that wonderful high-density core). I do think that the significant fraction of oxygen in Laythe's atmosphere means that there must be photosynthetic life in its seas (even if its just single-cell organisms) because the oxygen would be hard to explain otherwise.

And for anyone saying that Laythe must be terribly radioactive due to Jool's radiation belts, I would like to point out that the interior of Jool can't be anything like the interior of our jovian planets... it's too small and has the wrong density (although its density is low enough that it could be made from physically possible elements -- a rocky object about the size of Venus covered with a very thick atmosphere would look right). And even if the developers decide they MUST give Jool a magnetic field, it certainly wouldn't have to be anything near as powerful as Jupiter's because Jool isn't anywhere near the size of even our smallest ice giant planets (Uranus and Neptune).

[Kerbface]

Can we ignore the density thing? We all know that the Kerbal system is scaled down for gameplay purposes, we can probably imagine it is actually meant to be much bigger.

[Brotoro]

Can we ignore the density thing? We all know that the Kerbal system is scaled down for gameplay purposes, we can probably imagine it is actually meant to be much bigger.

You can ignore anything you'd like and imagine whatever you want. Some Indiana legislators once tried to define the value of pi to be exactly 3.2 because they didn't like the reality of it being an irrational number, but nothing came of it and the wheels in the state went on being round. And if you want to imagine different densities for the planets, your kerbal spacecraft will still orbit in elliptical orbits because your imagination won't actually change the sizes or masses of the planets in the game.

[baarnold]

Before I begin this thread, I would like to state that I know this is a game, but that doesn't exempt it from being unrealistic when so many other things are realistic. Laythe is physically impossible.

To begin with, the thermometer states that it is 5 degrees on Laythe, but considering the distance from the sun, that's extremely unlikely. The reason for this isn't so much the distance from the sun, but the atmosphere. The KSP wiki says that Laythe has a pure oxygen atmosphere. Oxygen doesn't trap heat very well. In order for Laythe to have a snowball's chance in a CAT scanner of getting up to 5 degrees, you'd need more of an atmosphere similar to Venus, not one similar to Earth's. Not only that, but planets have a really low chance of an oxygen atmosphere unless there is any life. Do you see any life on Laythe? No, meaning that Laythe is truly a very rare instance. Plus, even if there is any life on Laythe, most life needs a warmer temperature than 5 degrees. Overall, Laythe fails in all categories of possibility. I hope you are enlightened by this post.

First off, posting this was asking for everyone to argue with science and possibilities of how it is possible so don't get mad if you get criticized for posting along the lines of this. It is possible as people have posted that it could receive radiative heating from Jool, and oxygen does trap heat very well, once teh radiative deflection from Jool hits Laythe, it would create an ozone layer, therefore trapping heat.

Ozone is produced naturally in the stratosphere when highly energetic solar radiation strikes molecules of oxygen, O2, and cause the two oxygen atoms to split apart in a process called photolysis. If a freed atom collides with another O2, it joins up, forming ozone O3.

http://www.atm.damtp.cam.ac.uk/people/efs20/ozone/node3.html

[baarnold]

Also to add to that, did you know that there are millions upon millions of micro-organisms, microbes, and bacteria frozen in earths poles? Look it up before you argue which most people do.

[Kerbface]

You can ignore anything you'd like and imagine whatever you want. Some Indiana legislators once tried to define the value of pi to be exactly 3.2 because they didn't like the reality of it being an irrational number, but nothing came of it and the wheels in the state went on being round. And if you want to imagine different densities for the planets, your kerbal spacecraft will still orbit in elliptical orbits because your imagination won't actually change the sizes or masses of the planets in the game.

The thing is it's a difference between something being put in place for gameplay purposes and it being actually how the developers intend it to realistically be. I guess I can't speak for them but I doubt in the generally physics following universe of KSP they're designing the planets based on the idea that they are made of superheavy elements. In this thread it's been explained that Laythe is designed to follow certain actual planetary principles like geothermal heating and volcanic activity caused by it's position in relation to a gas giant, you can see that they are attempting to design them based on some sort of reality.

This is no different to how in the Elder Scrolls series you realise the provinces aren't actually that size in lore because most of them are about 6km^2 and none of them have the same scale despite supposedly existing in the same world. KSP is scaled down for gameplay's sake. It's a game, this isn't trying to alter reality.

It's the same as how you can keep contact with all ships at once even if they don't have communication with each other. They're not actually supposed to be controlled by a mysterious being who is invisible but is capable of telling them the other crafts exact orbit to help them rendesvous or anything, it's like that because it's a game and it would suck if you could never retake control of your ships when they were out of communication and you had changed to following another ship.

[Brotoro]

The thing is it's a difference between something being put in place for gameplay purposes and it being actually how the developers intend it to realistically be. I guess I can't speak for them but I doubt in the generally physics following universe of KSP they're designing the planets based on the idea that they are made of superheavy elements. In this thread it's been explained that Laythe is designed to follow certain actual planetary principles like geothermal heating and volcanic activity caused by it's position in relation to a gas giant, you can see that they are attempting to design them based on some sort of reality.

This is no different to how in the Elder Scrolls series you realise the provinces aren't actually that size in lore because most of them are about 6km^2 and none of them have the same scale despite supposedly existing in the same world. KSP is scaled down for gameplay's sake. It's a game, this isn't trying to alter reality.

It's the same as how you can keep contact with all ships at once even if they don't have communication with each other. They're not actually supposed to be controlled by a mysterious being who is invisible but is capable of telling them the other crafts exact orbit to help them rendesvous or anything, it's like that because it's a game and it would suck if you could never retake control of your ships when they were out of communication and you had changed to following another ship.

Did you not read my first post on this page? Or did you just go hyperbolic when you read about density? Nowhere was I arguing against geothermal heating or volcanic activity or any of the attempts to stay as close to realistic physics as practical (such as game sticking to Newtonian mechanics, with the simplification that they only allow one body's gravity to affect your ship at a time, and all other bodies are on rails). In fact, I spoke in favor of all those realistic things. I love it! I was just saying that the only blatantly unphysical aspect of Laythe was its density, and you can get around that objection with the single supposition of a super-heavy state of matter, and then you can continue to work with Physics as we know it in this miniature solar system. The existence of super-dense matter is something that gets used in science fiction stories all the time ("Its hull is solid neutronium! None of our weapons can harm it!") and I don't think it's way out in left field to suppose a quantum state of quarks could exist where they can form a stable lattice of macroscopic size, giving you material with the density of an atomic nucleus. And with that material (and you don't even need very big balls of the stuff) you can solve the density problem of the little planets and make a too-tiny star like Kerbol support thermonuclear fusion reactions (just like Arthur C. Clarke turned Jupiter into a star with lots of dense monoliths in its center). Give me the quark matter or neutronium or pion condensate or whatever you or the theoretical physicist of choice want to call it, and then I can go on with Physics as I know it to explain what I observe in the game. But if you just want to ignore what can see in the game (the masses and sizes, and therefore densities, of the bodies) and picture them as light fluffy objects, there are all sorts of physics violations going on. I wouldn't know how to calculate anything...and I calculate all sorts of stuff in this game to figure out what's going on.

I don't know what Elder Scrolls is, and whether or not the authors of that game try to stick to realistic physics model, so I can't comment about that.

As for communications between ships, as I understand it we will eventually get operating comm links (once the antennas and high gain dishes are more than just for show), and some people currently do use a mod that requires more realistic communications (or so I've heard...I haven't used that mod myself). You may think it would suck to have more realistic communication limitations, but the players that use those mods happily impose those limitations on themselves because (I assume) the greater realism makes the game more challenging and fun to them. I'd be quite happy if the communications setup, once implemented, incorporates light-speed limitations (when controlling a remote probe, for example). Currently I play the part of the pilots and computers that control the spacecraft, and I don't think I'm doing anything to violate causality by knowing where other ships are when I plan my maneuvers (in most cases those positions could be extrapolated easily using Newtonian physics and a simple computer system).

[IcarusBen]

To Brotoro,

Three short things: I agree with the density thing, mostly because the planets are quite small(Jool is the size of Earth), Elder Scrolls is a game about a magical realm(not very realistic) and finally, I think that communications should be a toggle-able thing in the options so you can alter the difficulty. So, yeah. Didn't think so many people would talk about this.

[Holo]

Another example is Starcraft. In the official books or guides or whatever, units are differently matched in combat against each other than in the games. The numbers were tweaked from what was "real" to what's fun. A similar thing happens with Laythe.

To Brotoro,

Elder Scrolls is a game about a magical realm(not very realistic)

Magic isn't involved in the area of provinces. In game they are about 6 km^2 but they are said to be larger.

[IcarusBen]

I didn't say anything about provinces, I said that Elder Scrolls is a game about an unrealistic magical realm. And I guess it was tweaked from "real" to "fun" but still.

[Holo]

I didn't say anything about provinces, I said that Elder Scrolls is a game about an unrealistic magical realm. And I guess it was tweaked from "real" to "fun" but still.

Since the context was in province sizes on TES, I assumed you were talking about that :-)

Also, I understand the direction your coming from, and it's based on interpretation of he evidence. I see the Kerbal system as a fun metaphor for our own, whilst you see it as a unique system with it's own set of rules.