Placet is a crazy place

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JoanDrake

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(The critique I would like here is scientific rather than literary. Is this place possible? or are there difficulties and inconsistencies in the planet’s natural history I have overlooked? As always, I thank anyone who is kind enough to offer their help)


Placet is the sixth planet orbiting the star Eta Carinae . It is about the size of Earth with a similar magnetic field and gravity.


About a billion years ago it was covered almost entirely (95%) by shallow seas. It had no orogeny, so the surface became remarkably flat. The only life was submicroscopic, very simliar to earths’ forminifera. It was like this for about 300 million years and as generation upon generation of the forminfera died and their amazingly tiny skeletons rained down upon the sea floor the planet became covered in a shell of limestone several miles thick.


Then Eta Carinae flared up due to internal storms. It heated Placet to the point where the oceans dried up. However, they did not escape the planet, only becoming vapor in the atmosphere


When Eta Carinae returned to normal, about 10 million years later, the ocean returned to liquid and rained down. The cool down was gradual and so was the ocean’s return, taking about 50 million years


And in that time the rain collecte in the very slight depressions in the surface which remained remarkably flat overall so there was little erosion. The water trickled through the limestone and formed caves.


Placet’s version of limestone, however was somewhat stronger than Earths. Karst structures were not formed, rather the caves simply became huger and huger


And the oceans drained into them, becoming thus removed from the rain cycle, forming rivers and oceans underground


So Placet is as you see it. A cave planet. Surface solar power stations run the cities underground. The human inhabitants, who arrived about 10 millenia ago, mainly make a living by mining and refining the limestone, unique across the galaxy for making a type of superstrong cement which is also uniquely beautiful
 
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I'm no geologist, but seems a reasonable evolution for an interesting world.

The export product (i presume it's an export anyway) of cement seems a little more far fetched though.
 
I'm no geologist, but seems a reasonable evolution for an interesting world.

The export product (i presume it's an export anyway) of cement seems a little more far fetched though.

Thank you. What would be better as a main export do you think?
 
I liked it, it's very good, and I personally think that the science part is sufficient enough for any reader.

The only thing that pulled me out of the passage was the references to Earth. I wanted to stay in the world you had created. I have no reference point in the story except for it being the planet Eta Carinae, on whether Earth is involved, or the humanity is from Earth. So this may or may not mean anything to you as the writer.

The submicroscopic, forminifera would be an interesting twist, if those little organisms were what actually made the export so valued.
 
unique across the galaxy for making a type of superstrong cement
That doesn't really work unless:
1) Interstellar travel is cheaper than local ocean going bulk carrier
AND
2) Immense source of super cheap energy to cook the limestone.

See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cement

Exporting very pretty Marble is slightly more believable as making cement would largely make the limestone have little advantage.

Marble is a non-foliated metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite. Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however, stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone. Marble is commonly used for sculpture and as a building material.
You still have the issue of the fantasy cost of transport in (1).
1a) Massive energy cost of getting limestone or marble or cement into Orbit.
1b) Energy cost of manouvre for Hyper drive / portal / Jump drive / wormhole or whatever.
1c) Energy and infrastructure cost of Interstellar shipping.
1d) Cost of landing it from orbit.

An on planet stargate unless simply magic, requires serious suspension of disbelief and energy.
 
I think that the notion of large marble formation might be a good way to go. This world could become an artist colony-great artists come from everywhere to work with the magnificent marble available and then the reason for massive expense to export it is taken car of in that people pay ungodly amounts for art.[sometimes] So it's a struggle and half the artist that come there are starving and when they leave are starving or dead, but that's the the risk you take. Sometimes Dead is more the better as the remains of their work become more valuable and often exportable.

So it's a colony where artist come to live and die and the government thrives on their legacies.

Still all and all I just can't envision any sort of story in all this and I have to go now and get started on something...
 
@tinkerdan
Well, Crystal Singer is one of the best Ann McCaffery books. You have germ of a brilliant idea there.
So
Add prospecting for the more desirable beautiful marble claims, gazumping, exploitation of artists by the interstellar megacorp, the sort of mad jealousy and maybe a murder stereotypical of Artists Colonies...
The achingly beautiful carving: Who was artist? Where was the Marble quarried?
The once famous artist that's produced nothing good for years, with giant ego.
The critic that "destroys" or "makes" or seduces young new artists.
The Rich Artist with no talent, "wasting" marble.
Love Triangles ...

The plot possibilities are endless with a bunch of Artists.
 
OMG, so many great ideas I didn't think of, may I use them? I can't pay but I promise them a loving home.

Victoria, I stole the name directly, as you well know. Maybe another, something obscure...anybody ever hear of Westeros? And everything I write is a tribute to Brown and Jack Vance, (please don't tell them, I'm haunted enough)

I was thinking of having a Universe where energy is remarkably cheap as there are black hole reactors, interstellar spaceships are the size of asteroids and they are loaded/unloaded from orbit by short range teleporters. The idea of unique marble is even better and the Artist Colony is wonderful. I wonder if I could combine the two (or three.)

I had this vision of a place some years ago and always wanted to write a story there but only recently came up with some idea of how to get the science right. I see one or two major problems even now, but am working on them. Thank you all so very much once again and more is better as far as critiques go
 
While this is a direct lift from Peter F Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga, I did think the idea of surface based stargates with trains running through was incredibly elegant. Dan Simmons did something similar with his Farcaster network with his River Tethys running through all the major worlds. (Between gates).

Something similar would help with the shipping of massive bulk goods like construction material a lot more believable.
 
I agree with what Ray said about the transportation cost issue. I think you would need to make the limestone something special and exotic to be worth a mining effort. Either exquisite beauty or maybe a more valuable mineral or something precious left behind by the life forms.

I think the history of the planet might be a bit much to push on readers all at once. I could easily envision this info being passed along in dribs and drabs a part of a tour a character receives of the mines (and maybe processing facility).

As for the technical on the world, everything seemed reasonable up to the point of the caverns. The oceans wouldn't drain into the caverns. Think of conservation of material. you start with a bucket of material (dirt, rock saturated with water), drain out the water (leaving holes and trenches as things shift around) but don't change the height of the dirt in the bucket. Then you pour the water back into the buck and you'll more likely find the water return to a slightly higher level than before as the remove/shifted material takes up the space the water was once in.

If the world was fairly "flat" meaning not high above sea level, when the water rained back down into oceans I would suspect most of these caverns would be under water. The water wouldn't simply disappear unless it was swept away into space by the solar event. Raising the topography of the dry land could help this, but the the history would have to be more of an inland sea type of scenario. Without making this too long, I think you have to add some geologic changes to have dry caverns with limestone (i.e. where water once was). The high temperature solar event may be a plausable cause for some of this geologic change.
 
I think you have to add some geologic changes to have dry caverns with limestone (i.e. where water once was)
Maybe an evolution of the forminifera could've started eating the shells of their predecessors and the byproducts of this interaction could've built up gas pockets that end up erupting or, through plumes, burn/explode when struck by lightning or other atmospheric phenomena. This would leave the flat limestone full of holes and give water a way to gather, leaving other areas in contact with the winds and whatnot, and erosion could do its thing.

These gas pockets or underground balls of fire could open interesting options when talking about the dangers of surface exploration or structural risks of the great caverns people live in.

Just an idea concerning geologic changes. But the dry cave problem remains.
 
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