A clockwork solar system?

[Steve]

I had an idea for a solar system that worked like a clockwork setting, but I don't know if it's possible based on real physics.

 

It is an artificially-made system, a remnant of an ancient race. It has a single planet orbiting a star in the life zone. The reason I call it a clockwork system is because the planet moves in a perfectly circular orbit and rotates at a speed that would take 360 planetary rotations for every complete revolution around the star.

 

Is such a thing possible, or would it require constant maintenance?

[RexMundi]

Re: A clockwork solar system?

 

Worked in the movie Dark City.

 

~Rex

[tkdguy]

Re: A clockwork solar system?

 

I looked it up and found this.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: A clockwork solar system?

 

Realistically possible, as we understand planetary formation? No.

 

Planetary systems are entropic; no matter how stable, eventually the mass of the sun will change, or there will be some fantastic collision between planetary bodies, or an orbit will decay, etc.

 

It would require "constant maintenance" but that would be in the long run, millions or billions of years. Without maintenance, I suppose such a system could be set up, but it would eventually degrade and not be quite so perfectly in synch.

 

Also, I think there would be a good argument for such a system to have more planetary bodies - particularly a gas giant - to counterbalance the sun's gravity, scoop up debris coming from outside the solar system, etc.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: A clockwork solar system?

 

Orbital maintenance might not be necessary but other stuff might be required.

 

Earth's spin is not perfectly around a single north/south line, it slowly rotates around. Scientists believe that the Moon is a stabilizing influence on this as well. Without the Moon it is very possible that the Earth could occasionally go into a tilted rotation similar to Uranus. The source of the inherent instability could very well be the Earth's hot molten spinning core .This is also what generates the magnetic field that protects life from most cosmic radiation.

 

Tkdguy's link implies that a moon with a large enough mass orbiting a planet might be enough to throw the planet's perfectly circular orbit into an elliptical one over time.

 

So the question is whether the minimum mass to stabilize planetary spin is also the minimum to disturb a perfectly circular orbit.

[Mister E]

Re: A clockwork solar system?

 

Reminds me of the new Doctor Who season 4 episodes 12&13.

 

 

Earth and twenty-six other planets are stolen by the Daleks. It is later determine that the missing worlds... removed from the universe (at large)... reorganise when placed near each other, into a perfectly stable demi-universe.

 

 

 

~ Mister E ("Spoilers...")

[csyphrett]

Re: A clockwork solar system?

 

Reminds me of Mainspring where all the planets are placed on rails around the sun which is a giant lamp. The solar system is described as a clockwork mechanism with the planets having gears to move them on the rails.

 

CES

[RexMundi]

Re: A clockwork solar system?

 

*Points to the Well World novels by Jack Chalker* Perfectly Round Planet, Perfectly Circular Orbit. Great stuff in Chalkers books and not the only series like that with the "Artificial System" in it though they all remain distinct from each other.

 

~Rex

[dmjalund]

Re: A clockwork solar system?

 

Reminds me of the new Doctor Who season 4 episodes 12&13.

 

 

Earth and twenty-six other planets are stolen by the Daleks. It is later determine that the missing worlds... removed from the universe (at large)... reorganise when placed near each other, into a perfectly stable demi-universe.

 

 

 

~ Mister E ("Spoilers...")

Has anyone seem Mister E and River Song in the same room at the same time?

[Christopher]

Re: A clockwork solar system?

 

Is such a thing possible' date=' or would it require constant maintenance?[/quote']

I think it would require Maintenance in the long run, but that could be done with things like a supercomputer + a few gravitation generators + ZPMs for energy, that are hidden somwhere (like the moon, the planetts core or inside the sun).

 

Of course how the entire system behaves realtive to the sorounding galaxy also plays a role. For example our solar system moves relative to the milky way rotation axis "up and down" and sometimes wanders into dangerous areas (where the stars are closer togehter and solar systems less well balanced, so stray masses could upset the orbits of our system).

 

Edit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System#Galactic_context

[Christopher]

Re: A clockwork solar system?

 

One thing to consider is also the average time the sun stays in one Livecycle. Yellow Suns are relative short lived and "quickly" become Red Suns, that are much more stable (except shortly after their birth).

 

Someone posted an article about the likelyhood of life in Red Sun systems (somwhere here in the Star Hero Area). Overall it is unlikely that live/the atmosphere survived the beginning phase of the star, but when you drag the planet to the habitable zone after the sun got out of "puberty" you get are really long time stable sun.

[Cancer]

Re: A clockwork solar system?

 

With a real system, there'll always some effects that will alter the orbits and planet rotations. Since the star and planet both have finite extent, there'll be dissipative tidal forces even in a one star - one planet system, for example. They won't be large effects, of course, but they'll exist. If nothing else, there's always gravitational radiation, which is a general relativistic effect that will drive the orbit smaller, albeit very slowly (much slower than stellar evolution effects).

 

The Habitable Zone does shift outward from a star over time as it evolves. The rate at which it shifts is slower for lower-mass stars. But it is also narrower at any given time for lower-mass stars, as well as being closer in to the star so that the tidal effects of star upon planet are much larger. Now that I think about it, it should be possible to go to standard 1-D stellar evolution model grids and figure out what the longest continuously habitable point is for any combination of star plus planet orbit size for a given set of assumptions.

 

Going back to Steve's question in the original post: yes, it would require constant maintenance. The Solar System has a not-fully-understood set of resonances among the planet orbits that has kept the orbits of the eight major planets reasonably stable, but even so the obliquity of Mars, for example, undergoes drastic changes over relatively short times. It seems probable that all of the terrestrial planets now have rotation periods very different from what they had 4.4 Gyr ago. And the populations of small bodies -- asteroids, KBO's, and comets -- have evolved drastically over the history of the Solar System, and we now see only a tiny remnant of the original populations.

[Old Man]

Re: A clockwork solar system?

 

I did a computer simulation, once upon a time, to demonstrate the importance of resonances in determining orbits. It doesn't take long (in astronomical terms) for low-integer resonance ratios of, say, 2:1 or 5:2 to go away--the orbits of the bodies involved get rather strongly perturbed such that they settle into less resonant orbits (or depart the system entirely). But strong perturbations like this still occur even with ratios of, like, 12:37, if you wait long enough.

 

Anyway... the reason I would argue against the possibility of a clockwork solar system is materials. I don't know what you could make the gears out of, at that scale, and still expect it to run for billions of years. Especially if you expect the mechanism to have negligible gravitational effects on the planets themselves.

 

edit: Having reread the original post, I guess gears are not really under discussion. Still, tidal influences would likely prevent the axial rotation of the planet from remaining at precisely 360/circumnavigation. OTOH, I note that at least one moon in our own system rotates exactly once per orbit, so it may not actually be impossible. And if the "ancient" race is ancient on a scale of thousands of years, as opposed to millions, then perhaps the system would not have had enough time to devolve out of its original orderly motion. Especially if certain alien artifacts are still operating....

[Escafarc]

Re: A clockwork solar system?

 

 

Anyway... the reason I would argue against the possibility of a clockwork solar system is materials. I don't know what you could make the gears out of, at that scale, and still expect it to run for billions of years. Especially if you expect the mechanism to have negligible gravitational effects on the planets themselves.

What if the mechanism is made of energy like focused gravity, the only physical part would be the Control module.

[Tom Carman]

Re: A clockwork solar system?

 

Has anyone seem Mister E and River Song in the same room at the same time?

 

Given that Dr. Song has a time travel device, what would that prove?

[Christopher]

Re: A clockwork solar system?

 

I recently stumbeled upon Septerra Core. While this is only a Clockwork world, it is one with a postive energy balance.

 

Considering that the worlds "Spine" is based on bio-technology and that energy can be generated from pressure, perhaps this thing generates it's energy from the gravitational effects using a bio-technological (self regenerating) variant of Piezoelectricity(or Piezoenergy) to fuel itself?

 

If so, you could do something similar advanced on system-scale (asuming an insanely advanced civilisation).