Re: Astrophysics question


Posted by Pasti on Feb 01, 2004 at 23:09
(67.69.240.77)

Re: Astrophysics question (Amaranth Rose)

Maybe it is not exactly my place to make literary suggestions, but do you really need numbers to mathch, or would the phenomenology be rather enough?

Because even some rough calculations about the height of the tides will take some time, without very enlightening results.

Think of the Earth and the Moon and the Sun.You have tides large enough to wash things ashore.Want larger tides? Well,put a heavy core in the Moon, and the tides will increase. Or increase the mass of the Sun, and you will have the same.
Only a Sun or two are enough to produce tides, so is a binary system.

I somehow doubt that the reader will start checking the story against Kepler's laws.Personally, I wouldn't, as long as there isn't something obviously unrealistic, and even then.It is sci-fi,I am looking for the ideea and not for numerical validity.

But there is a rather obvious problem with the watery motherlode.Think of the Dead Sea.The motherlode is still solid, because the water of the Dead Sea can contain only so much salt, due to saturation effects.
Sure, you can have soluble compounds of heavy elements in water (salts would be my first option), but if you don't have a "reservoir" of these compounds someplace to keep the saturation level constant, over time the concentration of these compounds in the water will decrease due to sedimentation, trapping at the bottom,shorewash, etc.
So the motherlode must be somewhere on the bottom of the sea, I would say.Although I am most likely already splitting unnecessary hairs.

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