Brown Dwarfs?

[Liam Devlin]

Plop101, and gentlemen;
IIRC there has been at least one instance where the Brown Dwarf was used in an adventure:

Set in the MT game era, Traveller's Digest 21, pp17-26; The Pirates of Tetrini; by Greg Videll.

Starting at Cossor (22424/Zarushagar), PCs are involved in a mission for the Duchy of Oasis (1122-time frame) to investigate a possible Pirate base.

Includes UWP maps of Wolf(K) and Oasis(L) subsectors.

The Brown dwarf occupies a key "em[pty space hex" allowing the raiders to cross a small reft (of some 6+ empty space hexes to spinward) in the Wolf Subsector.

Unfortunately, it says nothing IIRC about the "frequency" of such bodies. As with the estimable & honorable Mr Larsen Whipsnade's line of thought, I would for MTU purposes have them slightly more numerous than giant Younger stars.

There may even be small moons/ planetary bodies about this "dwarf" proto-star.

Here in this adventure, on one that is mostly ice, the pirates make their lair.

thank you for your time, gentlemen.
heretically yours,

 

[Vargr Breath]

Hi
In GDW's Arrival Vengeance, one of the last MT books, they used a comet to help them get across the Rift.So there is stuff out in the Rift you just have to be really lucky or know just where to look.Like maybe some Ancients site in orbit, or on a planet in orbit around a Brown Dwarf ?
Dwayne

 

[Whipsnade]

"In GDW's Arrival Vengeance, one of the last MT books, they used a comet to help them get across the Rift.So there is stuff out in the Rift you just have to be really lucky or know just where to look.Like maybe some Ancients site in orbit, or on a planet in orbit around a Brown Dwarf ?"


Sir,

Great nick, by the way! There're mornings I have 'vargr breath' too!

Sure, there is plenty of stuff out in the Rifts, but at no where near the level found in Mr. Kalbfus' TU. In his TU, it's all a matter of time and surveying. As he put it; You spend the time surveying a hex, find your fuel source, move onto the next hex, and repeat the process. Eventually, you'll have a path of one parsec hexes leading from one side of a rift to another. The rifts; as they effect the OTU, have ceased to exist. Any vessel can cross them at any point after the surveys have been done.

An occasional object every now and then is fine, there are plenty of adventures and campaign seeds predicated on them. Filling every hex with such objects is something else entirely. Filling every hex with such objects also happens to be much more like the Real Universe too!


Sincerely,
Larsen

 

[Whipsnade]

"IIRC there has been at least one instance where the Brown Dwarf was used in an adventure:
Set in the MT game era, Traveller's Digest 21, pp17-26; The Pirates of Tetrini; by Greg Videll."


Mr. Devlin,

Is that the one in which the raiders arrive in their target systems with a huge real space vector? The vector they arrive with is one of the clues to their base's location.

"Unfortunately, it says nothing IIRC about the "frequency" of such bodies. As with the estimable & honorable Mr Larsen Whipsnade's line of thought, I would for MTU purposes have them slightly more numerous than giant Younger stars."

A nice frequency peg to hang the brown dwarf hat upon. Sadly, having them under every rock and 'round every corner strains the fabric of OTU history. I'm sure that brown dwarfs and other objects ships may be able to refuel from would fill each and every hex in the Real Universe. That doesn't work in the OTU though.


Sincerely,
Larsen

 

[Liam Devlin]

Mr. Whipsnade,

Is that the one in which the raiders arrive in their target systems with a huge real space vector? The vector they arrive with is one of the clues to their base's location.

Yes sir, that is the one!

"Unfortunately, it says nothing IIRC about the "frequency" of such bodies. As with the estimable & honorable Mr Larsen Whipsnade's line of thought, I would for MTU purposes have them slightly more numerous than giant Younger stars."

A nice frequency peg to hang the brown dwarf hat upon. Sadly, having them under every rock and 'round every corner strains the fabric of OTU history. I'm sure that brown dwarfs and other objects ships may be able to refuel from would fill each and every hex in the Real Universe. That doesn't work in the OTU though.
__________________________________________________
And last I recalled, One A-class Giant star PER sector. So 2 Brown dwarfs per sector wouldnae be a bad peg, OTU/YTU, MTU, anyone's TU..Fairly reasonable though.

But there are also rogue gas giants, and cometary bodies as well.
these latter are more frequent than the former, certainly more common than Brown Dwarfs.(if one plays the odds).

heretically yours,

 

[plop101]

Joy! Liam and Larsen talking Traveller! Hey! Are you taping this Boris?

B-man: Da. It is taping tovarish.

Plop: JOY!

 

[EvilDrGanymede]

First, 'Brown Dwarfs' aren't actually brown - they're actually reddish, and the cooler ones are magenta (ref: http://www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0011132 ).

Second, if you're technically minded, go read these veritable bibles on Brown Dwarf evolution: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/journal/issues/ApJ/v491n2/36554/36554.pdf and this: http://zenith.as.arizona.edu/~burrows/papers/rmp/RMP-final.pdf

Salient points - the most massive ones are indistinguishable from mid-late M type stars early in their history (first few hundred million years or so), but differ in that they rapidly cool down and lose luminosity afterwards. They evolve from 'M Dwarf' to 'L Dwarf' to 'T Dwarf'.

So any worlds around them would only be at habitable temperatures early in their histories. Naturally, these worlds would be tide-locked to their massive primaries - without exception. In fact, getting a habitable world around them was rather fiddly (I spend the weekend making one for a JTAS project).

They also take a few tens of millions of years to fully form - and at first they're very much more luminous because of deuterium fusion in their cores. So most would only have habitable moons for a few tens or hundreds of millions of years. By a billion years they'd be too cool, probably.

 

[TKalbfus]

Don't forget the "IO effect" A brown dwarf with multiple planets would periodically have its planets pulled into noncircular orbits due to mutual gravitational attraction between the planets. Close in the the star this will periodically heat the core of the planet causing massive volcanic explosions from the innermost planet. Further out you can have hydrothermal vents heating up the planet to perhaps habital levels, this will last as long as their are planets orbiting the primary.

 

[EvilDrGanymede]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
Don't forget the "IO effect" A brown dwarf with multiple planets would periodically have its planets pulled into noncircular orbits due to mutual gravitational attraction between the planets. Close in the the star this will periodically heat the core of the planet causing massive volcanic explosions from the innermost planet. Further out you can have hydrothermal vents heating up the planet to perhaps habital levels, this will last as long as their are planets orbiting the primary.

Depends on whether the satellites are in resonant orbits or not (Io, Europa, and Ganymede are resonant with eachother. Ganymede and Callisto aren't). If they are, then it depends on how advanced the resonance is. But yes, this sort of thing can lead to worlds being more or less habitable than one might expect. I'd hesitate to say that all resonant systems are going to be clones of the Jupiter system though

 

[mad13142000]

If anyone is still following this thread...

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/gemini_keck_020107.html

VERY COOL...

-MADDog

 

[EvilDrGanymede]

If anyone's a JTAS subsriber, this week's issue has a very detailed article on creating and adding realistic Brown Dwarfs to Traveller. (he says, shamelessly banging his drum)