One climate worlds, ala Hoth, Tatooine, Yavin IV, etc

[kristof65]

It strikes me that the single climate worlds as depicted in Star Wars aren't very likely in real life.

However, I wonder if there are worlds that could have a dominant climate type over much, if not all of their surfaces. And if so, what kinds of climate realistically could dominate?

This may be a little too much information to impart here, but links and suggested further reading would be great.

 

[Da Boss]

Wasn't the Earth covered by ice at one point in pre-history?

 

[rust]

It strikes me that the single climate worlds as depicted in Star Wars aren't very likely in real life.

It depends somewhat on your definition of "single climate", I think.

Mars, for example, could be considered to have a very cold climate over
its entire surface, and on Venus the climate differences are probably even
smaller.

 

[kristof65]

Yeah, probably. Which means I should clarify that I'm talking about worlds that could be inhabitable and/or support life in some form.

Hoth itself seems reasonable, the "native" life on Hoth is what strains the credibility.

 

[rust]

Hoth itself seems reasonable, the "native" life on Hoth is what strains the credibility.

I do not know anything about Hoth's star and its distance from this star,
but apart from this I could imagine a plausible scenario where Hoth once
was a warm, perhaps even a tropical planet, and then cooled down slow-
ly enough to enable some native life forms to adapt to arctic conditions -
although in my view such creatures should be somewhat different from
the ones depicted in the movie.

 

[GypsyComet]

Just like rain on Planet Caliban...

Water being a significant cause of climate differentiation, the less of it available, the less climatic variation you'll tend to get.

Heavier atmospheres are more likely to lead to climatic variation than thin ones.

 

[klingsor]

Single climate worlds are pretty bad. They do not seem realistic at all. One thing that bother me about ice worlds and desert worlds in particular is where does all the oxygen come from to make the atmosphere breathable? You need some sort of life there to release the oxygen. Is there algae in the ice perhaps? You just need to be ready for some awkward bu**er of a player asking questions like that.

Of course if you can explain it then you can have it and the more power to you for doing so.

Apart from the really big dangerous ice age (possibly ages) way, way back that did cover the entire planet the recent ones have had more interesting effects. They cause climactic compression so we still get the same climactic zones but they are squeezed together, smaller in size. The nasty side effect of this is much worse weather.

 

[Stattick]

Well, O2 can survive in an atm for quite some time. So if it had been a living planet, but then got to hot or cold, there may still be O2 left in the atmo. I'm not sure exactly how long it would last though, and of course the longer the planet stays dead (or mostly dead), the higher the concentration of CO2 is going to get.

The Ice Planet hypothosis, IIRC from something I saw on tv, posits that we totally froze over for millions (?) of years at one point. As the CO2 built up in atmo though, the planet started to warm. There was still just a tiny bit of life left on the planet, some algea beneath the miles thick ice in a few places, still getting light shining down through the clear ice.

Then they had the mother of all storms (last thousands of years or something) when the planet ice started melting. Or something like that. If the guys that made the documentary didn't goof it up, and my memory didn't goof it up.

 

[kristof65]

Of course if you can explain it then you can have it and the more power to you for doing so.

That's actually what I'm trying to do - explain a world, but I also want to educate myself as to what is possible overall, so I don't paint myself into corner later.

Specifically, I need a homeworld for my aliens that is primarily swampland, or at least is swamp like over most of the habitable areas. See, I know what they look like, what type of environment they started out in, and what drove their evolution. I could take the easy way out, and say their world is simply a swamp world, but does that strain credibility? I'm guessing it does. So I have to consider what their world would really be like, and yet still give me the conditions I need/want for their evolution.

Is it mostly water with a few shallow areas where life abounds? Is it mostly desert, with a few concentrations of shallow water? Is it perhaps one of those wierd worlds where the water and atmosphere pool in deep canyons and crevices?

Rather than simply ask someone to do this for me, I'm looking for some good guidelines/references to do the research and building myself.

 

[rust]

Rather than simply ask someone to do this for me, I'm looking for some good guidelines/references to do the research and building myself.

You could try to find a copy of "World Building" by Stephen L. Gillett,
published by Writers Digest in Ben Bova's series of books for science
fiction writers. Over here it is currently about 14,- Euro, not much for
almost 200 pages of very useful informations about how to create both
interesting and plausible planets.

I use it together with GURPS Space 4th's excellent world building system
for my own setting(s), and as far as I can judge it these two books toge-
ther seem to be a truly excellent (and comparatively affordable) base for
science fiction world building.

As for your swamp world, I would think about a rather flat (= old and with
few geologic activity) planet that once had large polar ice caps, which be-
gan to melt and to almost drown the entire planet when a climate change
caused them to melt.

Just an idea ...

 

[GypsyComet]

Evolution of such a species need not have had the whole planet to work from. One of the generally accepted steps in Human evolution was the reduction of forests causing a necessary adaption to savannah life. Swamp dwellers may have emerged during a time when there was a reduction in total swamp, causing survival adaption of a swamp-dwelling proto-sentience in order to survive on the scarcer resources.

The race may well have since modified their world to be *more* swampy.

Swamps and similar terrains tend to form where water stops flowing but has not yet reached the open oceans. Silted in lake basins, large river deltas, former dry-land recently flooded to a few feet by sea-level rise, and similar.

For a still-water dwelling race, you could easily have them evolve along a super-river that has long stretches over flat ground, causing all sorts of meander features including crescent lakes, bogged up former channels, and periodic reset floods, rather like the Mississippi *should* be doing (and still does when it has had enough of ACoE tinkering). The rest of the world may be inhospitable, or it may be slowly falling before the onslaught of intelligence.

A dominantly swampy planet is more likely to be one that is going tectonically dead, or has too little tectonic activity to begin with. Tectonic activity is what keeps mountains forming, and if a world has too little, it may have weathered down to a very soft-looking low landscape. Note that this could still be a single continent on a larger world that just happens to have most of its tectonic activity on the other side of the planet.

The other possibility is a world that recently got impacted by an icy meteoric body and now has more water than it used to. This leads to all sorts of archology fun if the world had a civilization prior to the icefall. "Sunken City" tales will be rampant, but the survivors (of which there might be none, or who may be the current swampers) may not be equipped to find the truth behind their myths. Enter the PCs.

 

[RandyT0001]

Specifically, I need a homeworld for my aliens that is primarily swampland, or at least is swamp like over most of the habitable areas. See, I know what they look like, what type of environment they started out in, and what drove their evolution. I could take the easy way out, and say their world is simply a swamp world, but does that strain credibility? I'm guessing it does. So I have to consider what their world would really be like, and yet still give me the conditions I need/want for their evolution.

Is it mostly water with a few shallow areas where life abounds? Is it mostly desert, with a few concentrations of shallow water? Is it perhaps one of those wierd worlds where the water and atmosphere pool in deep canyons and crevices?

Do some research on Earth's Cretaceous Period. Make sure you look at the global map and maybe you can convert most of the shallow seas into swamplands. There might be a few small deserts but I think it fits as close as you're going to find to a "swamp world". You can get an idea what the temperature was like and since it's historical very few can argue about it's possibility and realism.

YMMV

 

[RockViper]

I dont see a problem if you start with an earthlike planet then move it to snowball or desert planet, if the change is slow enough then many organisms will be able to evolve with the climate and it will probably still be habitable. A waterworld is probably possible, but with lots of volcanic islands and sallow reefs (80-90% water). A planet covered entirely by forest (endor) is more problematic as is a habitable molten planet (mustafaar).

 

[RandyT0001]

A planet covered entirely by forest (endor) is more problematic .....

A planet covered entirely by forest is highly improbable but one where most of it's continental area is covered with forest might not be. Before man's population explosion and his developement of agriculture there were huge swaths of forests across most of the continents of Earth. Except for the somewhat smaller deserts and smaller savanahs, alpine treelines and arctic treelines of 15,000 years ago most of the Earth was covered in forsets (IIRC). To an alien visitor Earth might have look alot like a 'forest' world.
YMMV

 

[klingsor]

Some lovely ideas there. I particularity like the 'swampifying' one.

There is a novel idea about human evolution that posits a semi-aquatic phase for our ancestors. They lived on the shores and shallows of a lake and became adapted to take advantage of it then moved back fully onto the land because the lake dried up or to exploit a new habitat. It accounts for some odd aspects of human physiology. Google for aquatic ape if you are interested. It is twenty odd years since I read about it so I am a little shaky on details though I will have to bone up on it again as I am doing a talk on mermaids for the local folklore society in a month or two. It is a long story, basically I read a book with a rubbish entry on them and thought 'I can do better' then 'this would be an interesting subject'. What can I say, I have catholic tastes. The next one might be on Freemasonry which might be an idea worth exploring for Traveller as I could see a lot of benefits for such a body (like the JTAS but a bit quieter) as it and similar groups ranging from the harmless, through to eccentric and downright evil (with the craft on the nice end of course) seem to be somewhat that recurs so much it might as well be hardwired into us.