Homeless planets.

[Gimi]

Planets in inter stellar space in Oolite makes perfect sense now.

[CommonSenseOTB]

Indeed. Now I'm thinking about warp gates that are set up to reach those hidden gems...hmmmm. Does make sense. And as to RL it means our closest neighbors may be a short flight away. Enough mass would allow such a body to produce its own heat allowing life to evolve and the inhabitants probably would fly own of staer9's latest little beauties! (last bit not RL)

[Staer9]

Enough mass would allow such a body to produce its own heat allowing life to evolve and the inhabitants probably would fly own of staer9's latest little beauties!

Like my warp ring? all my models/scripts/whatever are free to use so feel free to steal them and make some sort of oxp

[DaddyHoggy]

Indeed. Now I'm thinking about warp gates that are set up to reach those hidden gems...hmmmm. Does make sense. And as to RL it means our closest neighbors may be a short flight away. Enough mass would allow such a body to produce its own heat allowing life to evolve and the inhabitants probably would fly own of staer9's latest little beauties! (last bit not RL)

How big does a planet have to be to self generate enough heat to support life (liquid water?) without having a crushing level of gravity?

[Smivs]

I'm guessing but not too big if it has a hot core....maybe small is good .

[DaddyHoggy]

I'm guessing but not too big if it has a hot core....maybe small is good .

Small is bad.

Surface area to volume ratio too high - radiates too much heat - cools quickly - no time for life to form (i.e. Mars)

[JensAyton]

How big does a planet have to be to self generate enough heat to support life (liquid water?) without having a crushing level of gravity?

I don’t think that’s really answerable, as there’s no equilibrium state for a planet’s temperature other than “very cold” (when there are no significant stars, residual heat, tidal forces or internal radiation left).

A more general question would be, what are the odds of a planet with a livable surface gravity having a water-friendly temperature range for several billion years? I’m going to go with “pretty small”, although “livable” is of course subjective – microbial life could probably form in what we’d consider quite extreme gravity. (Some poking about on Wikipedia suggests the surface gravity of an object in the border zone between a planet and a brown dwarf would be in the region of 30g, although the concept of “surface” is a bit vague at that size.)

A more fruitful target might be Europa-like moons, heated by tidal forces. Without knowing how free-floating planets form, it’s not obvious whether moons are to be expected.

Also note that free-floaters will be subjected to vastly higher levels of cosmic radiation.

[CommonSenseOTB]

Imagine even a jupiter sized body with a system of moons. The tidal forces alone would cause heat enough in the moons to produce volcanism. And if a moon was earth sized+ well then add a greenhouse gas atmosphere and the jones's next door might be somewhat similar. Even the actual smallish moons of jupiter(RL) have magnetic fields indicative of water under the miles of ice at the surface. Marine life is almost guarranteed everywhere as long as there is heat. Solo moonless rocky bodies would have to be quite big, maybe even 2 or 3 times+(Super Earth sized) in order to have enough heat for liquid oceans. Yes having moons or being a moon of a gas giant would be quite useful to a rogue planet/planet-moon-system with no sun. As to how these planets form I believe I saw a program once showing how some of the systems we are now detecting form, the ones with gas giants too close to the star and they illustrated a kind of solar billiards game where the giant goes into close orbit while another gets flung out of the solar system, if memory serves. As for cosmic radiation if the large planet or moon was spinning with a molten type core a magnetic field would be produced taking care of that problem. Ice covered planets/moons shouldn't have to worry about that problem though.
These bodies would be the strangest and most unpredictable environments we could imagine. What is certain though is that life takes root and finds a way so even the most bizarre place will probably still still serve hotdogs at baseball games!

[Ganelon]

Maybe a homeless planet or planets in interstellar space is the Thagoid homeworld, which would explain why no star system has ever been identified as the home base of the Thargoids. It could explain why they are so defensive of interstellar space.

[Staer9]

would it be possible to make a script that occasionly spawns a planet in interstellar space?

[JensAyton]

It could explain why they are so defensive of interstellar space.

What, all of it? :-)

[Ganelon]

Well, they do seem to be almost every place between systems Oolite players travel, since there's usually some whether a misjump is intentional or (presumably) broken by the Thargoids. That would imply that there are rather a lot of them, since presumably they do stuff other than just looking for humans/players to fight with. Ships need to be manufactured or grown or whatever, they likely have some sort of civilization, etc.

Or maybe they're far wierder than anything we've imagined yet. LOL

Probably not *all* of interstellar space, though. Nor by any means all of the "homeless planets". Logically, many of those homeless planets would be too cold or hot or whatever so the majority would be lifeless.

Just considering possibilities.

[Smivs]

While the Thargoids roam all of interstellar space, they generally concentrate in the areas between systems as that's where they're most likely to find food/incubators. And of course if nothing comes their way it is quick and easy to drop into planetary space to do a bit of hunting.
Of course what they'd really like to do is colonise planetary space, which would give them a large reliable supply of food/incubators. If they ever achieved this, they would multiply exponentially. For all we know they've been planning something like this for Centuries, and if they have, we'll probably find out about it fairly soon.

[Commander McLane]

Well, they do seem to be almost every place between systems Oolite players travel, since there's usually some whether a misjump is intentional or (presumably) broken by the Thargoids. That would imply that there are rather a lot of them, since presumably they do stuff other than just looking for humans/players to fight with.

While the Thargoids roam all of interstellar space, they generally concentrate in the areas between systems as that's where they're most likely to find food/incubators.

Note that the use of plural is a little misleading, though.

You can only be sure about the one location in interstellar space you're currently in. You have no information whether there are Thargoids at any other place at the same time.

I think the basic idea behind the whole concept of misjumps is that whenever one happens to you, you had the extremely rare bad luck to be in-between two planets where there actually was a group of Thargoids. In other words: the 50-or-so jumps you made before the one misjump indicate that no Thargoids were present along those routes. I think this is the intended impression misjumps are supposed to give. Whenever Thargoids are present on your route they will unfailingly pull you into interstellar space. So, if you haven't been pulled, there were no Thargoids. This makes them far less omnipresent.

The idea that Thargoids are in fact more or less omnipresent only stems from the ability to induce as misjump yourself and unfailingly meet some Thargoids as a result. However, Ahruman once pointed out that he believes the misjump-inducing ability to be a pure debug-feature that wasn't actually meant to be included for use of the ordinary player. I tend to agree to this theory. All conclusions about the Thargoids drawn from self-induced misjumps would therefore have to be handled very cautiously, or disregarded from the get-go.

[ClymAngus]

"What's more, they claim that in our galaxy, free-floaters are probably so populous that they outnumber stars."

An unfortunate name contraction. One open to many a "cheap shot".