Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 16:39:17 -0800
From: Michael Andre-Driussi 
Subject: (urth) Green the Outer World

Duh!

In my previous figurings, I put Green as a Venus stand-in.  Those jungles,
doncha know.

But hey, if Green is a full disk in the sky (iirc it is always a disk,
never crescent--another big tip if that is correct, since outer worlds are
always seen as disks), then it must be located further from the Breenstar:
an outer world dipping in, rather than an inner world reaching out to Blue.

This could help a lot with the whole six-year problem.  It probably plays
havoc with the estimated "habitable zone" around Sol-type stars, but maybe
not.

Let's see . . . put Blue at 0.95 AU (Fogg's Moist Greenhouse outer edge),
put Green at 1.83 AU (Fogg's outer edge of Juvenile Mars, just this side of
Runaway Icehouse) . . . hmmm.  Sure, that's right: Green at 1.83 AU would
have an orbit of around 2.5 years. And Blue would have an orbit of 0.93
years.

Now we can have the case where Green slowly gets into position at
periastron and Blue comes racing up and past.  But how often would the
closest encounters be?

Back to Roy's Blue Moon: it is the sense that Green has been =steadily=
shrinking in size, right?  That's what makes it seem like Green is a moon.
If it were the planet I'm talking about, it would be growing and shrinking
every year, but its maximum size every year would be increasing up to
closest encounter and then shrinking every year after that until the third
year when it would start growing again (while still growing/shrinking every
year).  A series of oscilations (planet) rather than a stately progression
through the night sky (moon).

(Oo, that's another thing--first glimpse of Green from Blue, at the end of
EXODUS, was near sunset, no?  Datapoint.  Is it ever seen during the day?)

=mantis=


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