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That’s an interesting exoplanet, though not sure how someone would live on a gas giant.
by dmazin 3y ago
That’s an interesting exoplanet, though not sure how someone would live on a gas giant.
- thereisnoself 3y agoI don't think it makes sense for a humanoid species, but silicon based, perhaps? Iain M Banks' The Algebraist [0] has a near immortal species called Dwellers that manage it somehow :) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Algebraist#:~:text=Dwellers%20are%20one%20of%20the,the%20foundation%20of%20the%20Mercatoria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Algebraist#:~:text=Dweller....
- dekhn 3y agothis is one of my favorites by Banks. Really mind-twisting.
- downWidOutaFite 3y agoPresumably gas planets have a layer dense enough that a solid would float.
- dotancohen 3y agoAnd not melt?
- wongarsu 3y agoMaybe they don't. They might live on a rocky planet further out and just use TrES-2b as a place to run their solar farm because it's extremely close to their star and (due to being uninhabited) didn't have any NIMBYs opposing large-scale construction projects. Note how far out from the planet's orbit NASA expects the habitable zone. We aren't very good yet at finding planets that aren't huge or nearly hugging their star, so there might be planets out there.
- exe34 3y agoTo be fair, if your solar farm can be in orbit around a planet that's not your legal address for tax purposes, it can just orbit the star?
- wongarsu 3y agoMaybe building on the planet had some advantages during construction, like easier delivery or being able to use local resources. Or maybe the atmosphere helps with thermal management. Or being on a planet is useful for the infrastructure that does something with all that power (beaming it to other planets, producing solid, liquid or antimatter fuel for export, refueling space ships or robots, etc). Tax purposes. Diplomatic reasons, maybe there are established protocols for owning planets but large scale light blocking installations in orbit would upset a neighboring nation (though you suspect their opposition has more to do with simmering tensions over the Agreppo peninsula than with concerns about the impact on agriculture). There are plenty of plausible reasons, probably all wrong.
- edgyquant 3y agoCould be legacy reasons. Maybe they initially built it around this planet, or maybe they’re from a moon in or it around it, and now it provides more than enough energy for their needs. I find people looking for aliens always expect them to be doing the most efficient thing and forgoing any semblance of history.
- exe34 3y agoAww man would be so cool to meet aliens and they show us around their stuff, and it all seems really dumb and convoluted, and they hate it too, but it would be too expensive to rip it all out and start over...
- exe34 3y agoIn accelerando by Charlie stross, they live on raft that covers a large percentage of the planet's sky.
- wolverine876 3y agoMaybe they live on a moon or two.