61–70 of 77 posts
Sometimes I wonder how different our world might be if it were the size of Jupiter but at the surface still had the same gravity we have now. It could take days to download something from the other side of the planet. And probably a month of airplane travel just to get there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>And probably a month of airplane travel just to get there. Space travel would probably be more advanced by now.
It would be drastically harder to get out of the gravity well on the planet. Even if the strength of gravity at the surface was the same as Earth’s, the field would be stronger farther out than Earth’s —- 11x as much due to the geometry. It would take 11x more energy to escape the planet, though low orbit would be practically the same difficulty.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assuming the existance of something like early human hunter-gatherers, if the earth were the size of Jupiter, we would not have transitioned to living in cities yet. There would be no downloading.
Why not? Why does a bigger planet mean slower progress?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What word would you use for composite false-color images produced by a computer if not "renderings"?
computer "renderings" has a very specific meaning, creating images from 2D or 3D models. I would call this a 'composite image.'
One thing that might not be related but I found fascinating is that Jupiter is “木星” in Chinese, where “木” means wooden. The first time “木星” was mentioned in Chinese literature was in 东汉, year 25 - year 220 (around 1800 years ago). So Chinese people back then thought the planet was made of wood! And as a child, this planet has the name easiest to remember, because it looks exactly like a wooden ball. Edit: I digged de…
I'm pretty sure the ancient Chinese could see the colors of at least some of the planets. You don't need a telescope to tell that one celestial object looks redder than another, especially if you have good eyesight and no light pollution. Venus is indeed golden; Jupiter is red-brown like some type of wood; Saturn looks like it's covered in sand (土 can mean dirt as well as rock, and there's a lot of yellow dirt in Chi…
One thing that might not be related but I found fascinating is that Jupiter is “木星” in Chinese, where “木” means wooden. The first time “木星” was mentioned in Chinese literature was in 东汉, year 25 - year 220 (around 1800 years ago). So Chinese people back then thought the planet was made of wood! And as a child, this planet has the name easiest to remember, because it looks exactly like a wooden ball. Edit: I digged de…
> There's a single Southern Polar Cyclone (the SPC in this case), but only five cyclones around it! They're bigger too, and are different sizes, ranging from 5,600 to 7,000 km across. Again, it's not clear why the poles are different. The fact that there are fewer in the south and they're bigger may be related (I'm guessing, but if you have fewer they can grow to fill more space … ?), but no one really knows. Maybe b…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not? Why does a bigger planet mean slower progress?
Not a specialist here, but bigger distances will mean - more time to discover other places and other people which means you won't find new knowledge for some time and then you will need more time to bring it to your people. Slower trade too.
One thing that might not be related but I found fascinating is that Jupiter is “木星” in Chinese, where “木” means wooden. The first time “木星” was mentioned in Chinese literature was in 东汉, year 25 - year 220 (around 1800 years ago). So Chinese people back then thought the planet was made of wood! And as a child, this planet has the name easiest to remember, because it looks exactly like a wooden ball. Edit: I digged de…
Not knowing Chinese, I also had to look up '星', as parent comment does not explain it. It means planet, so literally 'Wooden Planet'. Nice.
Sometimes I wonder how different our world might be if it were the size of Jupiter but at the surface still had the same gravity we have now. It could take days to download something from the other side of the planet. And probably a month of airplane travel just to get there.
I wonder if it would be possible for such a planet to exist and be habitable. Obviously it would have to be far less dense than Earth (or Jupiter); I'm guessing gravity would therefore compact it to a smaller size, unless maybe it was made out of some kind of lattice structure? Better question might be what's the largest feasible (or likely) potentially habitable planet with earth-like gravity.