400 million years to build a planet?

[stevebowers]

I'd like to have an entry on this subject eventually; the M67 cluster could be full of garden worlds by now. This cluster is somewhere between Sophic League, NoCoZo and Metasoft space, and any or all of these empires could have arrived there at around the same time. M67 is only mentioned on the site currently as a location of 30 blue stragglers; a type of star normally found in long-lived globular clusters.

[Drashner1]

I'd like to have an entry on this subject eventually; the M67 cluster could be full of garden worlds by now. This cluster is somewhere between Sophic League, NoCoZo and Metasoft space, and any or all of these empires could have arrived there at around the same time. M67 is only mentioned on the site currently as a location of 30 blue stragglers; a type of star normally found in long-lived globular clusters.

The more I think about it, the more I can see a lot of potential for this location. Over 1000 stars in a volume 20ly across. Short travel times (relatively speaking) even w/o wormholes, possibly a lot of garden worlds (if we want to go that way), maybe leftover artifacts from ancient xenos or maybe precursor AIs passing through earlier in the timeline. maybe some Terragen megastructures, and developed systems here and there - but a lot of lightly inhabited places as well given the distance from the center of things. You could probably even fit in an archai or two if you wanted.

Hmm.

Todd

[Cray]

Too bad Mizar already has an entry. I'd like to make an OA entry for it with a terraformed world. OA technology and depth of history solves so many problems.

[stevebowers]

Plenty of other stars in the Plough, or if you prefer a different named star, try Jim Kaler's interesting site
http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/class.html

[Bear]

I think I'm going to write something about Iota Librae. It's a quaternary star system (two B-type large dwarf stars orbiting each other about 15 AU apart, two smaller G-type yellow dwarf stars orbiting each other about 230 AU apart, and the second pair orbiting the first pair at a distance of about 6600 AU).

And I'm postulating that there's probably a very interesting volume in the Lagrange points leading and trailing those two yellow stars, where raw materials far exceeding what's available in a normal protoplanetary accretion disk are likely to have coalesced into a bunch of major planets and moons and minor asteroids in enormous halo orbits. It could be a very interesting place. Four very bright stars overhead, very weak solar radiation available from them, lots of raw materials and no nearby suns. Damn cold and mostly dark.

At the same time, two G-type yellow dwarfs - the ideal star for an earthlike planet to be near. And two B-type stars, perfect for starlifting darn near a solar mass each out of in order to extend their lives as well as get massive amounts of building material in one place.

[Drashner1]

This sounds like it could be a fun system to play with. The Lagrange points might be colonized using conversion tech to provide light/heat/power and host many habs supporting Earth-like (or very exotic) environments. Or perhaps the inhabitants choose to modify themselves to thrive in the cold and dark of the volume and, while having just as much access to conversion tech, use it much more sparingly to support even more exotic habitats. Or some combo of both, even. Lots of room for different groups to play if they've a mind to.

Given the distances between the stars you could actually have 4 entire solar systems worth of 'stuff' - both raw materials and artifacts made from them. You could have terraformed or worldhoused planets around the G-class and possibly even the B-class components as well.

Depending on how you wanted to play it, you could have a local transapient population or entity as well. If the system is sufficiently major in importance, you could even have a wormhole connecting the two binary systems. Or maybe a micro-nexus of comm-gates.

Just some thoughts,

Todd

[Bear]

Actually I'm thinking that, in addition to several "normal" populations, it might be a hideout for a whole bunch of people on the lam and a small gang of transapient crooks. Maybe three or four or five SI:2 or so who, for reasons incomprehensible to us mere mortals but which may be somewhat unsavory, are extraordinarily wealthy (in some resource rare even for transapients), turn a more-or-less benign neglect on criminal humans hiding out in the area as long as they don't prey on their favored factions or draw too much attention to the system, and who themselves are willing to go to a lot of trouble to avoid the attention of other transaps.