Star Ejecting Water ...

[fiat_knox]

A Star Seen Ejecting Jets Of Water​

It's the exploration of wonders such as these that I'd like Traveller to be about. Not endless burble about deck plans and fleet movements and that stuff.

 

[aramis]

Traveller has many different aspects, but at its core, it has always focused on people under duress, not physical sciences.

Even fleets are examples of the duress that people put on people (tho', to be honest, the "big ship imperium" really leaves me cold these days).

I think the science is really nifty, but it's not something that I can base a game around... It is something to consider when revising the world gen and system gen rules (done that), but it's not something that's going to make much difference.

High speed water vapor at 0.0001C isn't a radiation hazard, it's a drag issue and thermal issue. And given the probable densities, probably not a dangerous one of either. So it's a pretty descriptive...

 

[Blue Ghost]

They're kidding, right? How does a superhot ball of gas spit out H20? I'm trying to recall my nuclear chemistry, and I don't recall anything that produces two hydrogen and one water atom at those temperatures, and at those speeds. Maybe they're picking up ice crystals formed from the atoms that were slowed due to the star's gravity?

Or is Grandfather up to his old tricks *wink*

 

[fiat_knox]

Now you see where the fun starts. Your characters could be sent to this system as part of some Scout mission to determine how the star puts out water like this. Hydrogen in older stars does burn to helium, then beryllium, boron, carbon and ultimately oxygen - so clearly something is causing oxygen from the core to eject into space, and en route that oxygen is picking up hydrogen from the outermost shell of the star.

So the characters would expect the star to have all those other listed elements (curiously enough, though, not lithium - a quirk of nucleosynthesis) in its Fraunhofer lines.

But when their readings confirm the presence of only hydrogen and oxygen combining to form water, and jets with a regular modulation, that is when things start getting a little "hinky," and you have a mystery to solve.

You never know - it really might lead to an experiment of Grandfather's.

 

[HG_B]

A Star Seen Ejecting Jets Of Water​

It's the exploration of wonders such as these that I'd like Traveller to be about. Not endless burble about deck plans and fleet movements and that stuff.

This one would make for a boring adventure. Starship jumps to system and spends 1 month recording sensor readings. Starship jumps back.

It IS fascinating but makes for poor RPGing.

N.B. This a proto-star. It isn't past the hydrogen "burn point"/

 

[Jame]

Now you see where the fun starts. Your characters could be sent to this system as part of some Scout mission to determine how the star puts out water like this. Hydrogen in older stars does burn to helium, then beryllium, boron, carbon and ultimately oxygen - so clearly something is causing oxygen from the core to eject into space, and en route that oxygen is picking up hydrogen from the outermost shell of the star.

So the characters would expect the star to have all those other listed elements (curiously enough, though, not lithium - a quirk of nucleosynthesis) in its Fraunhofer lines.

But when their readings confirm the presence of only hydrogen and oxygen combining to form water, and jets with a regular modulation, that is when things start getting a little "hinky," and you have a mystery to solve.

You never know - it really might lead to an experiment of Grandfather's.

And then, one week or so into it when the characters are all spread out doing their own thing on all the protoplanets in the system, the Zhodani arrive.

After a few minutes describing the system and getting everyone to not only spread out, but also to say "hey, that's real? Cool!".

 

[fiat_knox]

And then everybody just gets out miniatures and moves them around and I might as well have just cut out the middle man and spent my money buying a chess set instead of all these books.

 

[Gray Lensman]

In the "Huffington Post" I dont believe it

 

[fusor]

In the "Huffington Post" I dont believe it

The funny thing about the internet is that you can look for other news sources too. Or even look up the original paper (it's the top one on the list, by Kristensen et al).

 

[Madarin Dude]

Could be an interesting bit of set dressing for any number of scenarios. A hidden pirate base in a system with no planets? A place to seed a plan for long term terraforming.