u/JohnWarrenDailey

Imagine Earth in a trinary instar system.  What are instars, you ask?  Simply put, they are artificially crafted stellar bodies that, exactly like insect larvae molting to different levels before pupating into adults, can shed their old photospheres to make way for smaller, longer-lasting newer ones.  They always spend their first three million years as O2-type blue dwarves and their final ten trillion as M9-type red dwarves.

At the center of this hypothetical solar system is an instar currently on the B0 stage of its life.  Orbiting it from a distance of 1200 astronomical units is a binary system.  One is currently on the F2 stage of its life, the other on the F1 stage.  Orbiting the binary P-style is the hypothetical Earth.

Instead of 365 24-hour days in a year, there are 728 48-hour days in a year, and each season lasts 182 days (or 364 regular days), which suggests an unnaturally circular orbit.

 

In this hypothetical Earth, daylight measures in at 93,000 lux, which is 93 percent as bright as daylight on real Earth.

 

The hypothetical Earth doesn’t have a moon.  Instead, the single instar that the binary orbits is so far away that summer nights are two to three times brighter than a full moon on Earth.  The only difference is that the sky has more of a bluish-violet tinge bordering on indigo.  In the southern hemisphere, the south pole faces away from the binary and sees only the one that the binary orbits.  In essence, south polar winter.  During orbital winter, all three stars can be seen on the sky during the day and all the time at the south pole, thus making it south polar summer.

 

 

Based on the info provided above, some questions follow:

1. Would a faraway star on the night side of the planet still have cycles of quarters and wanes and crescents like our moon?
2. If one hemisphere faces a different star, would it have different dosages of radiation than the other hemisphere?
3. Does the luminosity match the revolution?  In other words, using the specified rotation and revolution, would this hypothetical Earth be orbiting the binary from comfortably within the habitable zone?  Are 1200 astronomical units really enough of a distance for a B-type star to shine as brightly as astronomical twilight?

This just-for-fun scenario comes with only three choices:

1. Human
2. Elf
3. Dwarf

In Star Trek lore, the Klingons are said to have eight-chambered hearts for massive blood circulation and three lungs for exceptional physical stamina and endurance. In any other science fiction story, a population of humans (not necessarily Homo sapiens) has been genetically engineered with eight-chambered hearts and three lungs. But in doing that, could such a combination really work like that in actuality?

And no, "no humans" is not an acceptable answer.

Let me clarify:

In this megastructure colony, humans and few other Homo species (like Neanderthals and Denisovans), colonize this world alongside populations of their respective species that have been genetically engineered to resemble the classic fantasy humanoid races--elves, dwarves, goblins, orcs, centaurs, mermaids, gods, etc.

Fast-forward thousands of years to the point where science fiction, fantasy, Western, noir and war drama coexist with one another, and you'd find human populations with countless generations of genetic, cultural and societal admixtures at their backs. Sure, the distinction between different genetically engineered humanoids is present, but that is in multiple gradients. So how would I let the readers know that despite having dwarves, elves and several other genetically engineered races in their genomes, the human characters of this story are still labeled as "human"?

Here's the basic scenario of this seedworld: loosely similar to Earth, the one relevant difference being that each of the four seasons lasts the exact same length--182 days, which, given its 48-hour rotation period, translates to 364 Earth days, or one day short of one whole Earth year. At such a length, would this alien world be a suitable colony for any mammal that deals with winter by shutting down (bats, bears, a few squirrels, some cricetids)?

Some additional details in the even that they might be relevant to influence an answer, the axial tilt is 17.9 degrees, atmospheric thickness is 1.6 Earths and daylight is 93,000 lux (or 93 percent as bright as daylight on Earth.)

Here's the specific scenario:

A young prince of the "hero kingdom" finds himself betrothed to marry a princess from one enemy kingdom who is already married to a princess from another enemy kingdom. Both princesses, in turn, are married to a woman from across the pond who already has a husband and a wife of her own. In each example, the marriage is performed separately.

So the question is--in this scenario, how are the marriages kept secret from the kings and queens of their respective kingdoms? How can it be done without any of the kings or queens knowing that their children married both enemies and non-royals behind their backs?

Here's the specific scenario:

A young prince of the "hero kingdom" finds himself betrothed to marry a princess from one enemy kingdom who is already married to a princess from another enemy kingdom. Both princesses, in turn, are married to a woman from across the pond who already has a husband and a wife of her own. In each example, the marriage is performed separately.

So the question is--in this scenario, how are the marriages kept secret from the kings and queens of their respective kingdoms? How can it be done without any of the kings or queens knowing that their children married both enemies and non-royals behind their backs?

They're more likely to be referred to by local or colonial names, like most of our extant megafauna are, rather than Greek or Latin scientific names like they were in our timeline. So if, for example, a reconnaissance party of Spaniards found populations of Smilodon, Homotherium or Miracinonyx in the American Southwest, what kinds of names would they give them? What would the hundreds of Native American tribes call such iconic giants as the mammoths, mastodons, sloths and glyptodonts?

They're more likely to be referred to by local or colonial names, like most of our extant megafauna are, rather than Greek or Latin scientific names like they were in our timeline. So if, for example, a reconnaissance party of Spaniards found populations of Smilodon, Homotherium or Miracinonyx in the American Southwest, what kinds of names would they give them? What would the hundreds of Native American tribes call such iconic giants as the mammoths, mastodons, sloths and glyptodonts?

In creating "hybrid dinosaurs" in science fiction or science thriller, the specimens in question are usually Frankenstein's Monster. For example, Indominus Rex is said to carry the DNA of several different species, as well as cuttlefish and tree frogs. But, as I've said earlier, that's just Frankenstein, not true hybridization.

True hybridization requires the specimen's genome to be at least one-half of one species and another half of another. In this scenario, "Al" is the codename for an artificially-conceived theropod that is one-half Albertosaurus sarcophagus and one-half Allosaurus jimmadseni. This would result in a morphological in-between of different body parts, which brings up the question: Which species has a certain bone of each and every type that is longer, shorter, broader, narrower, higher and lower? Right off the bat, to cite an example, it'd have teeth that are sharper than Albertosaurus's but not as sharp as Allosaurus's.

In creating "hybrid dinosaurs" in science fiction or science thriller, the specimens in question are usually Frankenstein's Monster. For example, Indominus Rex is said to carry the DNA of several different species, as well as cuttlefish and tree frogs. But, as I've said earlier, that's just Frankenstein, not true hybridization.

True hybridization requires the specimen's genome to be at least one-half of one species and another half of another. In this case, "Al" is the codename for an artificially-conceived theropod that is one-half Albertosaurus sarcophagus and one-half Allosaurus jimmadseni. This would result in a morphological in-between of different body parts, which brings up the question: Which species has a certain bone of each and every type that is longer, shorter, broader, narrower, higher and lower? Right off the bat, to cite an example, it'd have teeth that are sharper than Albertosaurus's but not as sharp as Allosaurus's.

By "Earths", I mean exactly what it means--a wet body 7,915-and-a-half miles in diameter, 6.58 billion trillion tons in mass and approximately five-and-a-half grams per cubic centimeter.

By "ultramassive", I mean 77-and-a-half times as massive as Jupiter.

For clarification, Otodus megalodon was the enormous shark that recent media have been clamoring to have actually survived past the Miocene-Pliocene border and hiding in the dark, unexplored depths in the present day.

I do mean "artificial" because, naturally, a planet the size of Earth can't support more than one major moon like ours. This can only be done artificially.

In this scenario, a solid planet that spacefaring humans have colonized has not one moon but three, all bound together by an electromagnetic ring. Separated by 120 degrees of co-orbital space, the moons orbit their parent in a very elliptical fashion, meaning that their angular diameters shrink and expand dramatically within a single cycle.

Now what would the lunar cycles of such a system look like? Would there still be full, gibbous, crescent and quarter phases like our moon? Or would the elliptical differences in size be sufficient for a lunar calendar? Would all three of them even synchronize to make a single lunar calendar, or would there be three separate calendars?

Before Carl Linnaeus came up with the binomial nomenclature system that scientists still use today, animals were given different names by different cultures. "Bear" and "wolf", for example, have Germanic origins, whereas "raccoon" had a Powhatan origin. So the challenge is if any of these Pleistocene megafauna...

• Homotherium
• Smilodon
• Mammuthus
• Megaloceros
• Megatherium
• Nothrotheriops
• Eremotherium
• Mylodon
• Megalonyx
• Mammut
• Castoroides
• Coelodonta

...had managed to survive into the Holocene, what sorts of names would they be given? You can use any language you want.

For clarification, there are ten-and-a-half million cubic miles of water on the Earth's mantle. But if that entire amount gets transferred to the surface, how much higher would the sea level rise, and how would the hollowed-out mantle adjust to the sudden absence?

Would they call all of their mothers "mom" and all of their fathers "dad"? Or would they refer to one particular parent in a different way? If yes, then how?

Lately, I've been exploring the idea of a fantasy world where the majority of the human population doesn't bat an eye on polyamorous relationships, and some of the students in the story come from poly parents. But having never come across a polyamorous family before, I have no idea on the intricate nuances of such dynamics. How would a child address one parent without having them confused with another?