Sunday, April 1, 2012

BEYOND PLUTO


There really could be a giant planet hidden far beyond Pluto

By Alasdair Wilkins
There really could be a giant planet hidden far beyond Pluto









Pluto is about forty times the distance from the Sun as Earth. But the Solar System is over 50000 times that length across, meaning it could be hiding some huge secrets. That's now looking like a small but real possibility.
In recent years, astronomers have discovered a bunch of planets located at least 100 astronomical units, or the distance from the Sun to the Earth, away from their host stars. These planets are gas giants - they would have to be for us to see them at all - so this is something very different the dwarf planets like Pluto and Eris discovered in our solar system's Kuiper Belt and beyond.
There's almost no chance that these giant planets could have formed as part of their host star's planetary disc, considering their immense distance away. That strongly suggests that these are former rogue planets captured by the star's gravity. Hagai Perets of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Thijs Kouwenhoven at Peking University's Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics teamed up to figure out just how often we can expect stars - potentially including those like our own Sun - to capture these giant wandering planets. ScienceNOW reports their results:
Because most stars are born with others, Perets and Kouwenhoven ran computer simulations to see what happens when a star cluster contains free-floating planets. If the number of free-floating planets equals the number of stars, then 3% to 6% of the stars succeed in capturing a planet, and some stars capture two or three. Most of the captured planets end up hundreds or thousands of times farther from their stars than Earth is from the sun. Furthermore, most captured planets have orbits tilted to those of native-born planets, and half the captured planets revolve around their stars backward.
Their work depends on having a good grasp of how many rogue planets there really are, and we can't be sure our current estimates, which suggest there area as many wandering planets as there are stars, is accurate. But if these results are accurate, then our Sun, whose mass is slightly above average, had a real chance of capturing one or more planets eons ago.
The chances aren't huge by any stretch - probably only a few percent, according to Perets - but if their numbers are accurate, then the possibility of such a planet definitely exists. Coupled with some recent, admittedly far from convincing signs pointing to such a planet's possible existence in the Oort Cloud, the Solar System might just have one gigantic secret waiting for us to discover.
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GENESIS 14

Mountains_spitzer_f800

ZAANUSSII

18

SOL PRIMUS

The Sun Gif

RIGELAN DEFENCE FORCE


BARUUL MERC

THE TWINS

http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/h_et_planets_02.jpg

AZRIL

MATRIX 33

KELEV

STEINMAN CLASS B HEAVY HAULER

Steinman Class B Heavy Hauler

While it will never get the glory of a Crossbow, or even the quiet respect of a Starmaster, the Steinman is, arguably, the most important starship in human space. The vessel, over 70 years old, is quite simply the lynchpin in all interstellar human commerce, without which there could be no Protectorate.

Little more than a command module, a pair of engines and a cargo hold, the Steinman is a simple, but effective design that has kept colonies, core worlds, and the military supplied through peace, war, and across a hundred varying climates.

Not at all fast, and usually completely unarmed, the ship’s only defense is a powerful passive sensor system, and a negative mass drive with the shortest warm-up time of any non-military human ship in operation. Often traveling in convoys with a few escort vessels, a pack of Steinman under attack will quickly go to FTL using preset coordinates, so that there is a much shorter navigational computation time. An average ship takes 1D4 minutes to perform a jump, but a Steinman can usually do it in half that (most military ships have the same jump time).

With a crew of six, a modular cargo hold that can haul up to 500 tons, and a very reasonable price tag, it is the ship of choice for most large corporations, and is the transport of choice for the military as well. But even the military versions rarely have armaments. To keep space consumption to a minimum, the Steinman has a very small power plant. At most, it might be able to be fitted with a turret, but not a very powerful one. A much more reasonable option for arming the Steinman is to put missiles on it, which need no large power source.

Steinman haulers are most often encountered hauling food, raw materials, dry goods, water, large groups of people and military supplies. Pirates tend to avoid them because highly valuable cargo is much more likely to be on a smaller, better armed, light or medium transport. Some budget colony operations also use them to transport colonization supplies and colonists. By dividing the massive cargo bay into two decks filled with bunk beds, the Steinman can carry up to 600 passengers.

Model: C-98 Class B Heavy Hauler

Class: Freighter

Crew: 6, capable of carrying up to 600 passengers

M.D.C. by location

Sensor array – 150

Engine pods (2) – 400 each

*Main body – 2,000

Command module – 800

*Depleting the M.D.C. of the main body would disable the vessel, causing the command module to detach as a life pod. Steinmans rarely explode; usually only when they are carrying highly flammable or volatile cargo.

Speed

Maximum Sublight Speed: .2 C, or 20% of the speed of light

Maximum Acceleration/Deceleration Rate: 4 Gs per melee round

Maximum FTL: 365 x C, or one light year per day, half that speed for civilian models.

Top Atmospheric Manuevering Speed: Mach 1.5, but can attain escape velocity on a full engine burn (cannot maneuver)

Statistical Data

Height: 44 ft

Length: 210 ft

Width: 115 ft

Cargo: 500 tons

Power Plant: Fusion Reactor

FTL Drive: NMD-365 (military) or NMD-183 (Civilian)

Range: varies with supplies carried. Estimated it could travel 400 light years, but none has ever tried.

Market Cost: 2 million credits new, 1 million credits used.

Weapon Systems: None

Sensors: The Steinman has a powerful early-warning system that gives it mass and electromagnetic field sensors with a range of 1 million miles, and powerful short-range sensors with a 300,000-mile range.

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