Sciency planet stuff

[HoskhMatriarch]

As far as sciency planet stuff goes, I'm rather lost. I know what Kön' is supposed to look like but not what would cause it to look that way. I'm also not sure if certain things are realistic, like having a planet considerably bigger than Earth (well, at least a couple times bigger) or having the moon turn around as it orbits Kön' or having some planets that look like different colors of the rainbow (even if only faintly) when viewed from the ground with the naked eye. I like sciency stuff but I don't want to have to do really hardcore PhD stuff to make a conworld, especially since it's probably not 100% realistic that a lot of the same things (e.g. Homo sapiens, various domesticated animals, albeit with some slight changes) or very similar things (e.g. flying animals that aren't birds or bats, but are still animals and not some weird alien lifeform) would appear on a non-Earth world (although hey, convergent evolution is a thing in real life).

[CrazyEttin]

I recommend Artifexian’s videos.

[Salmoneus]

As far as sciency planet stuff goes, I'm rather lost. I know what Kön' is supposed to look like but not what would cause it to look that way. I'm also not sure if certain things are realistic, like having a planet considerably bigger than Earth (well, at least a couple times bigger) or having the moon turn around as it orbits Kön' or having some planets that look like different colors of the rainbow (even if only faintly) when viewed from the ground with the naked eye. I like sciency stuff but I don't want to have to do really hardcore PhD stuff to make a conworld, especially since it's probably not 100% realistic that a lot of the same things (e.g. Homo sapiens, various domesticated animals, albeit with some slight changes) or very similar things (e.g. flying animals that aren't birds or bats, but are still animals and not some weird alien lifeform) would appear on a non-Earth world (although hey, convergent evolution is a thing in real life).

...was there any sort of question in that, or just a general complaint about not wanting to have to work?

I can't tell you what made Koen look that way because I don't know how it 'looks'. Is it a cube? A flat triangle? A mushroom?

Is it realistic for a planet to be bigger than Earth? Yes, as I'm sure you know - we're finding superearth exoplanets all the time, plus there are actually a bunch of planets bigger than earth in our own solar system. How earthlike can a superearth be? Well, at some point they'll turn into gas giants, but you've got plenty of time before that happens. Other than that, what's the problem? One curiosity is that as planets get bigger, they're more likely to be waterworlds - because the oceans are exuded from the wet rock of the young planet, and the amount of rock (and hence water) increases as the cube of the radius, but the surface area available to hold the exuded water goes up as the square of the radius, so oceans get deeper and deeper the bigger the world (and thus the greenhouse effect gets steamier and steamier, until quite quickly it all runs away). However, you can easily handwave the amount of water available in the first place, so although that should hold true statistically your planet can always be an outlier.
Of course, if you've got humans on it you've obviously got more of a problem, due to gravity. To have the same gravity (and hence the same humans) but a bigger planet, you need a lighter, less dense planet. And obviously there's a limit to that, which you can work out for yourself pretty easily I'm sure.

What colours can planets be? Well, again, that's probably something you can work out for yourself pretty easily. Obviously they can be blue (water) and red (Martian dust). Yellow-brown-orange seems pretty easy too (sand, lots of types of rock - look at a picture of the earth). Between vegetation and common oceanic rocks, I'm guessing green shouldn't be a problem either. I don't know about indigo and violet, but you can look those up yourself.

[HoskhMatriarch]

Well, it was just supposed to be questions about how to do stuff. I don't really know much about geography or astrophysics or whatever I need to know.

The different color planets are supposed to be how they look from the ground to humans (like Mars is the "red planet", I want to have some that obviously look other colors from the ground). I figure you can have gas giants in pretty much any color (Neptune looks indigo-ish to me, although it's not visible from Earth so I'm not sure it would look that way in the sky if it were closer), although rock planets are probably more limited. Mostly I just need to know things to the extent I need to describe them so people don't facepalm. I don't want to just work with a small flat area in this conworld (like a lot of fantasy writers seem to) because I have a lot of different continents and things worked out already.

Is there any way you can get hollow spaces inside a planet without them collapsing? I think that could lower the density a lot and it would also make a cool place for something-or-rather to live if you had water and volcanic activity in some of the hollow places (I mean, there are things that live at the bottom of the ocean without any sunlight). Also, it would make the myths that a lot of people have where the world just falls apart (like, literally) at its end more realistic since it's easier for things with lots of bubble-gap-space-things in them to crumble than for solid things to.

I probably shouldn't fret about this kind of stuff too much for a fantasy conworld, but I still don't want things to be obviously unrealistic, and as I said I don't want to use a flat map of a space about the size of one or two continents because there are way more things going on than that in this world.

[Keenir]

because I have a lot of different continents and things worked out already.

see below.

although rock planets are probably more limited.]

um, no, they're not.
for one, look at our inner solar system - Mercury to Mars.

then, for two, look at the moons of the Gas Giants.

Is there any way you can get hollow spaces inside a planet without them collapsing?

we call them caves.

I probably shouldn't fret about this kind of stuff too much for a fantasy conworld, but I still don't want things to be obviously unrealistic,

as we've told you before, readers - us included - will accept quite a bit of unrealism, in exchange for something to read.

and as I said I don't want to use a flat map of a space about the size of one or two continents because there are way more things going on than that in this world.

you do know what I'm going to ask, don't you? :)

show us just one thing going on; please?

[Keenir]

i just remembered something.

Mostly I just need to know things to the extent I need to describe them so people don't facepalm.

then don't describe them; see below.

most people don't facepalm at the science in, say, Captain America...but they might have if the science had been spelled out with things like, say, "adding liquid fossils to the hydrooxygenated syrup, doctor."

I probably shouldn't fret about this kind of stuff too much for a fantasy conworld,

there is no probably about it. don't fret. post.

s there any way you can get hollow spaces inside a planet without them collapsing?

but I still don't want things to be obviously unrealistic, and as I said I don't want to use a flat map of a space about the size of one or two continents because there are way more things going on than that in this world.

didn't you once mention that this was taking place in a hollowed-out world/asteroid/other place? that means somebody took the time to make it hollow, and to put struts and concrete or whatever to ensure it won't collapse.

just treat it like background material - if you write a couple having breakfast at home, you don't need to know how their air conditioner or toaster oven work, do you?

[HoskhMatriarch]

didn't you once mention that this was taking place in a hollowed-out world/asteroid/other place? that means somebody took the time to make it hollow, and to put struts and concrete or whatever to ensure it won't collapse.

No, I think you have me confused with someone else.


But anyways, even if I made a giant seemingly-flat world that was ridiculously huge, I don't think anyone would complain about even that as long as I don't try to describe how it works. I mean, no one is complaining about Lord of the Rings not being scientifically accurate that I know of. And if J. R. R. Tolkien had been spending hours upon hours working on plate tectonics, I'm pretty sure the other stuff wouldn't have been as cool.

[Keenir]

didn't you once mention that this was taking place in a hollowed-out world/asteroid/other place? that means somebody took the time to make it hollow, and to put struts and concrete or whatever to ensure it won't collapse.

No, I think you have me confused with someone else.

entirely possible; my brain tends to conflate.

I mean, no one is complaining about Lord of the Rings not being scientifically accurate that I know of. And if J. R. R. Tolkien had been spending hours upon hours working on plate tectonics, I'm pretty sure the other stuff wouldn't have been as cool.

*nods*

and, as Tolkien advised - Leaf By Niggle and all that - start with the description of one part of the leaf (one part of your conworld) and expand from there. don't do the entire thing all at once.

[elemtilas]

No one is complaining about Lord of the Rings not being scientifically accurate that I know of. And if J. R. R. Tolkien had been spending hours upon hours working on plate tectonics, I'm pretty sure the other stuff wouldn't have been as cool.

and, as Tolkien advised - Leaf By Niggle and all that - start with the description of one part of the leaf (one part of your conworld) and expand from there. don't do the entire thing all at once.

Indeed! And don't sweat it if part of the leaf turns out to be sentient or that barely visible purple band along the edge is actually dipping into a whole nother set of dimensions. There does come a point when too much time is being spent on what are really minor matters of infrastructure.

[gach]

Neptune looks indigo-ish to me, although it's not visible from Earth so I'm not sure it would look that way in the sky if it were closer

Getting closet to Uranus and Neptune, you should certainly see them bot as bluish. The main physical problem in making such planets bright enough to display their colours for a planet bound naked eye observer. You'd have to bring the planets much closer to the habitable planet for that, which means bringing them closer to the star. I suspect that you'll find it hard to replicate the atmospheric chemistry of the ice giants in the warmer environments closer to the star. The best way I can see for making a blue planet in the inner planetary system would Rayleigh scattering in a transparent atmosphere plus an ocean bellow to more efficiently reflect the scattered light back to space; in other words the situation we have on Earth.

Remember that it's important to make the planets bright enough on the sky for naked eye observers to see their colours. The colour sensitive cone cells in a human eye need a certain amount of light before they activate. At approximately 5 visual magnitudes, Uranus is visible to the naked eye as long as you use a map to find it. But because it's so dim, there's no trace of its blueness to the eye and it appears as a white dot indistinguishable from the surrounding stars. Moreover, especially for the brighter targets there's a large brightness contrast between them and the dark surrounding sky. This also affects the colour perception, making even Mars seem paler than you'd perhaps expect from it being famously the "red planet".

Is there any way you can get hollow spaces inside a planet without them collapsing?

The closest thing I know of internal hollow cavities significantly affecting the density of a rocky body is the structure of many irregularly shaped asteroids. These bodies are often called rubble piles since a long history of collisions between the smaller asteroids has ground them to smaller pieces that are loosely bound together by gravity. In between the pieces there can be sizeable empty spaces that make the apparent densities of the asteroids suspiciously low. The thing is that once the asteroids grow enough that gravity starts to force a spherical shape for them, the internal cavities can't hold any more and collapse under the weight of the rock above them. Hollow planets or dwarf planets are things of fantasy.

[Salmoneus]

Let's see how much of your reply to me falls into the categories of: (a) boasting about your harrowing confrontations with destiny; (b) boasting about how much better you are than everyone else; (c) complaining about what unspecified 'other people' (usually other conlangers/conworlders) do; (d) relaying anonymous concerns of 'some people' on the internet or of hypothetical people who don't exist; (e) boasting about about your conworld that include neither specifics (beyond very vague parameters) nor problems nor questions; (f) talking about your own posts; (g) ignoring replies; (h) answering your own questions; (i) repeating yourself.

Well, it was just supposed to be questions about how to do stuff.

(f)

I don't really know much about geography or astrophysics or whatever I need to know.

(a)

The different color planets are supposed to be how they look from the ground to humans (like Mars is the "red planet", I want to have some that obviously look other colors from the ground).

(i)

I figure you can have gas giants in pretty much any color (Neptune looks indigo-ish to me, although it's not visible from Earth so I'm not sure it would look that way in the sky if it were closer), although rock planets are probably more limited.

(h) and (g)

Mostly I just need to know things to the extent I need to describe them

(a)

so people don't facepalm.

(d)

I don't want to just work with a small flat area in this conworld

(a)

(like a lot of fantasy writers seem to)

(c)

because I have a lot of different continents and things worked out already.

(e)

Is there any way you can get hollow spaces inside a planet without them collapsing? I think that could lower the density a lot and it would also make a cool place for something-or-rather to live if you had water and volcanic activity in some of the hollow places (I mean, there are things that live at the bottom of the ocean without any sunlight). Also, it would make the myths that a lot of people have where the world just falls apart (like, literally) at its end more realistic since it's easier for things with lots of bubble-gap-space-things in them to crumble than for solid things to.

Hooray! Actual content! See below...

I probably shouldn't fret about this kind of stuff too much for a fantasy conworld,

(a) with implication of (c)

but I still don't want things to be obviously unrealistic,

(a) with connotations of (d)

and as I said I don't want to use a flat map of a space about the size of one or two continents

(a) with implication of (c)

because there are way more things going on than that in this world.

(d) with implication of (c).

Answering your actual content: yes, you can have hollow worlds, if you use magic. Or if you have a super-weird setting like everyone's made of a couple of molecules inside a layer of frothy soap scum. Otherwise no, obviously gravity would obliterate any substantial hollows within a planet. The earth in over 6000km in radius: what substance do you think could withstand 6,000km of rock pressing down, so that you could build a dome from it? And if you could make such a space, it would be too hot for anything to happen in it. Hint: the fact that the centre of the earth is so hot and pressurised that our core is made of liquid iron should be a hint that you're not going have light and airy caverns down there.

[Disclaimer: my own conworld is impossibly large and light and presumably must be hollow. The difference is, I don't care.]


Rewriting your posts without the narcissism, the time-wasting and the passive-aggressive belittling of other conworlders:
"Hi, does anyone know whether it's possible to have a hollow or substantially hollow planet, scientifically speaking?"

See? Wouldn't that have been easier to type?

[kiwikami]

Spoiler:

Let's see how much of your reply to me falls into the categories of: (a) boasting about your harrowing confrontations with destiny; (b) boasting about how much better you are than everyone else; (c) complaining about what unspecified 'other people' (usually other conlangers/conworlders) do; (d) relaying anonymous concerns of 'some people' on the internet or of hypothetical people who don't exist; (e) boasting about about your conworld that include neither specifics (beyond very vague parameters) nor problems nor questions; (f) talking about your own posts; (g) ignoring replies; (h) answering your own questions; (i) repeating yourself.

Well, it was just supposed to be questions about how to do stuff.

(f)

I don't really know much about geography or astrophysics or whatever I need to know.

(a)

The different color planets are supposed to be how they look from the ground to humans (like Mars is the "red planet", I want to have some that obviously look other colors from the ground).

(i)

I figure you can have gas giants in pretty much any color (Neptune looks indigo-ish to me, although it's not visible from Earth so I'm not sure it would look that way in the sky if it were closer), although rock planets are probably more limited.

(h) and (g)

Mostly I just need to know things to the extent I need to describe them

(a)

so people don't facepalm.

(d)

I don't want to just work with a small flat area in this conworld

(a)

(like a lot of fantasy writers seem to)

(c)

because I have a lot of different continents and things worked out already.

(e)

Is there any way you can get hollow spaces inside a planet without them collapsing? I think that could lower the density a lot and it would also make a cool place for something-or-rather to live if you had water and volcanic activity in some of the hollow places (I mean, there are things that live at the bottom of the ocean without any sunlight). Also, it would make the myths that a lot of people have where the world just falls apart (like, literally) at its end more realistic since it's easier for things with lots of bubble-gap-space-things in them to crumble than for solid things to.

Hooray! Actual content! See below...

I probably shouldn't fret about this kind of stuff too much for a fantasy conworld,

(a) with implication of (c)

but I still don't want things to be obviously unrealistic,

(a) with connotations of (d)

and as I said I don't want to use a flat map of a space about the size of one or two continents

(a) with implication of (c)

because there are way more things going on than that in this world.

(d) with implication of (c).

...

Rewriting your posts without the narcissism, the time-wasting and the passive-aggressive belittling of other conworlders:
"Hi, does anyone know whether it's possible to have a hollow or substantially hollow planet, scientifically speaking?"

See? Wouldn't that have been easier to type?

...I am far, far from the best person at picking up tone and meaning and things like "passive-agressive belittling" from text, but with all due respect, Salmoneus, this seems remarkably harsh. HoskhMatriarch came here with concerns - maybe those concerns weren't as well-voiced as you'd have liked them to be, but I see no reason to accuse them of being narcissistic. Their first post seemed clearly to be a request for advice - when someone says "I don't know X", particularly as a topic post in a thread on a forum where a lot of people do know X, isn't it implied, I think, that they are asking for help with X? That's the "connotation" and "implication" I get out of it. And they are certainly not wasting anyone's time; anyone can choose not to read this thread or reply to it. I just... don't understand this animosity? Perhaps there some other factor here that I am unaware of?
I'm not trying to be offensive here myself, and if I am coming off that way, then I'm afraid it is entirely unintentional; I am possibly worse at indicating the correct tone and meaning through text than I am at picking it up. But I saw nothing narcissistic or belittling about HoskhMatriarch's posts, just someone trying to balance what they want in a conworld and what works scientifically without being too technical and with little knowledge of how to do it, and I'm just confused by the harshness of this response.

Answering your actual content: yes, you can have hollow worlds, if you use magic. Or if you have a super-weird setting like everyone's made of a couple of molecules inside a layer of frothy soap scum. Otherwise no, obviously gravity would obliterate any substantial hollows within a planet. The earth in over 6000km in radius: what substance do you think could withstand 6,000km of rock pressing down, so that you could build a dome from it? And if you could make such a space, it would be too hot for anything to happen in it. Hint: the fact that the centre of the earth is so hot and pressurised that our core is made of liquid iron should be a hint that you're not going have light and airy caverns down there.

It would be possible to have a network of cave systems that either (1) are naturally connected to one another or (2) are connected by the planet's inhabitants, creating a very large underground, potentially livable area that might be sufficient for an underground civilization. But as said above, a true hollow planet really doesn't hold up (literally) if you've got a rocky world. You could, though, have large caverns much closer to the surface while you couldn't further down, particularly if - as Keenir said - they built struts and supports to help prevent cave-ins; and that civilization could very well think they are living in the center of the planet, depending on their level of technology and geologic knowledge.

I don't think anyone would complain about even that as long as I don't try to describe how it works.

No one will complain! Even if you did describe how it worked, chances are most people either wouldn't notice it wasn't scientifically accurate or they just wouldn't care. If you fill it with extraneous, ridiculous technobabble in one field or another just to make it sound fancy, then yeah, you might provoke some eye-rolling from anyone in that field who is reading about the world (rather like conlangers reading the Inheritance cycle), but honestly, no will really care unless you explicitly (and falsely) claim that it all makes perfect scientific sense. The only reason to go into the detail of how it all works is for your own sake, because you want things to make as much scientific sense as possible, or because it's fun to puzzle out how everything works (both excellent reasons!) - but certainly not just to appease anyone reading about it!

[Salmoneus]

I am far, far from the best person at picking up tone and meaning and things like "passive-agressive belittling" from text, but with all due respect, Salmoneus, this seems remarkably harsh. HoskhMatriarch came here with concerns - maybe those concerns weren't as well-voiced as you'd have liked them to be, but I see no reason to accuse them of being narcissistic. Their first post seemed clearly to be a request for advice - when someone says "I don't know X", particularly as a topic post in a thread on a forum where a lot of people do know X, isn't it implied, I think, that they are asking for help with X? That's the "connotation" and "implication" I get out of it. And they are certainly not wasting anyone's time; anyone can choose not to read this thread or reply to it. I just... don't understand this animosity? Perhaps there some other factor here that I am unaware of?

The point is that it's post after post after post of exactly the same things. "I don't think I'm able to deal with [X]. Everybody tells me that [X] is really important. But all other conworlders deal with [X] really badly, and I don't want my conworld to fail that badly! Particularly when I've already made it so incredibly awesome, and deep and complicated and innovative. But people tell me that if I don't get [X] perfectly right it'll all be rubbish. And I can't do [X] - I mean, look at how terrible I am, I've already [done supposedly awesome and unique thing], that's how bad I am at [X]! I really want to put a lot of thought into [X], unlike most conworlders, but it's just not possible, there's so much I haven't learnt." etc etc etc. This constant construction of a really elaborate pose, and either a) very little or b) none at all of the post is actually given over to i) asking a concrete, specific question, or ii) sharing a concrete, specific thing they've done.

And each time, everybody rushes to help, and Hoskh posts between 1 and 3 replies that ignore what everyone else has said (or tangentially focuses on only one aspect), never ever thanks anybody for their help, and then never comes back to the thread. Instead, they make a new thread that is exactly the same except with a different title and perhaps, if we're lucky, a slightly different value for [X].

I wouldn't have point this out if it were one or two posts, but it's almost every post, continually, for months, and it feels less like we're actually helping with conworlding at this point than like we're just filling some role in their personal psychodrama. [It doesn't help that when people elsewhere say anything to Hoskh they run here to talk about them dismissively, and presumably they do the same there when we say anything here...]

So I would really like Hoskh to do us here the decent courtesy of:
a) actually having specific questions or problems, not vague "science! so hard!" or "verbs! urgh!" etc, and being upfront about what productive response they are looking for;
b) showing that they actually pay any attention to the help they're given, perhaps by thanking us, or perhaps by actually showing us some of the things they make as a result;
and
c) cutting out the woe-is-me, inferior-are-others rhetoric that reliably makes up 90% of each of their posts.

It would be possible to have a network of cave systems that either (1) are naturally connected to one another or (2) are connected by the planet's inhabitants, creating a very large underground, potentially livable area that might be sufficient for an underground civilization. But as said above, a true hollow planet really doesn't hold up (literally) if you've got a rocky world. You could, though, have large caverns much closer to the surface while you couldn't further down, particularly if - as Keenir said - they built struts and supports to help prevent cave-ins; and that civilization could very well think they are living in the center of the planet, depending on their level of technology and geologic knowledge.

Of course caves exist (though given how little grows without light, I'm extremely skeptical of the idea of any actual subterranean civilisation on an earthlike world). But they would not address the problem of how to lighten a large world sufficiently to have earthlike gravity.

No one will complain! Even if you did describe how it worked, chances are most people either wouldn't notice it wasn't scientifically accurate or they just wouldn't care. If you fill it with extraneous, ridiculous technobabble in one field or another just to make it sound fancy, then yeah, you might provoke some eye-rolling from anyone in that field who is reading about the world (rather like conlangers reading the Inheritance cycle), but honestly, no will really care unless you explicitly (and falsely) claim that it all makes perfect scientific sense. The only reason to go into the detail of how it all works is for your own sake, because you want things to make as much scientific sense as possible, or because it's fun to puzzle out how everything works (both excellent reasons!) - but certainly not just to appease anyone reading about it!

See, they know all this. Because for one thing it's obvious, but more importantly (as there are anxious newbies who think like this, granted) because it's what Hoskh has been told every day for a year now. And every time they post they include those "I don't know if people would complain about..." triggers to prod us into reassuring/complimenting them.

[Keenir]

[It doesn't help that when people elsewhere say anything to Hoskh they run here to talk about them dismissively, and presumably they do the same there when we say anything here...]

at least then, the "people say" can be pinned down. tis a bit harder when the people are one's own anxieties (which, granted, we all experience)

So I would really like Hoskh to do us here the decent courtesy of:
b) showing that they actually pay any attention to the help they're given, perhaps by thanking us, or perhaps by actually showing us some of the things they make as a result;
and

to be fair, Hoshkm has posted a few threads, each of which offers a few posts of a new conlang.

and, also well, Hoshkm has taken to helping answer others' questions in the various threads where others ask for help/advice in one thing or another.

[DesEsseintes]

I personally believe Sal has done an excellent job pinning down why Hoskh's threads tend to be so infuriating. If Hoskh were to actually read his analysis carefully and give it some thought, they might benefit a lot from it. However, as Sal rightly points out, despite the endless advice that has been given to Hoskh over the last year(?; it feels like an eternity), they seem unwilling and/or unable to change their posting style and behaviour. For this reason, I personally choose to minimise all interaction with Hoskh.

[Salmoneus]

I personally believe Sal has done an excellent job pinning down why Hoskh's threads tend to be so infuriating. If Hoskh were to actually read his analysis carefully and give it some thought, they might benefit a lot from it.

I'd like to stress this point, in relation to the "why are you so mean!?" concern. I didn't just insult Hoskh or belittle them. I did my best to point out and illustrate why so many people have an increasing problem with their posting style, in the genuine hope that they might read it, reflect, recognise, and reconsider. And I also did address all of their substantive questions as well.