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| Possible origin of the name "Threshold" | |
| Posted By: Anton P. Nym (aka Steve) <sumpca@yahoo.com> | Date: 4/19/04 11:24 p.m. |
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I was poking around the Marathon Story Page and stumbled on the Cortana Letters. This letter from May 11, 1999, and the commentary afterward, gave me an idea for how the planet "Threshold" got its name. In that first email "Cortana" tried to spoof her return address to look like it came from NASA, and the subject headers of both emails referenced papers written by NASA scientists on finding extra-solar planets. Nothing new so far, right? But have a look at Miguel Chavez's email... it mentions gas giants, yes, but also brown dwarfs. These are different from gas giants in a very peculiar way. They're too massive to be planets; brown dwarfs have too much gravity to reach a stable composition by structural strength or material compression. They support their size by internal heat generated by compression and friction. However, they're not massive enough to be stars; they can't get hot enough to initiate fusion. Brown dwarfs sit on the threshold between planets and stars. Is Threshold a brown dwarf? It might be... don't let its relatively puny size throw you off. (Yes, it's puny. Compared to Jupiter it's a runt... just scale the 10,000 km diameter Halo against it.) Brown dwarfs are diametrically smaller due to their higher compression. They make up for it in density. Other supporting evidence is the clear visibility of stars in the daytime sky on Halo. (See the level Halo for a really vivid example.) For that to happen there must be less atmospheric scatter of incident light than here on Earth. There are two ways for this to happen:
There's a tiny problem with the second option, though; if Halo gets less sunlight, then it should be colder than Earth. But Halo has reasonably Earthlike climates. This problem goes away if Threshold is a brown dwarf, as it will radiate plenty of infrared radiation as it simmers away trying to be a star. That could very well make up for a deficit in sunlight as far as temperatures are concerned. So the sun can be dimmer or farther away, allowing for less upper-atmospheric scatter. Also, this name origin explains how the UNSC could have named it without having been there first. Remember those NASA papers? It would be fairly easy for 26th century scientists to find brown dwarfs telescopically without ever having to visit the system. (Basis would be found by minor perturbations in Threshold's orbit, using the same techniques.) There's one other reason for liking the brown dwarf theory. A galaxy-spanning superweapon needs a pretty hefty power source. Having a not-quite-sun nearby would be handy, wouldn't it? I used Louis' handy-dandy new search feature to check for mentions of "brown dwarf" and caught only one other case... which had nothing to do with Threshold. That means this is new, right? (Right? Heh heh?) Anyway, over to you guys. There's probably some holes I need to fill. Start poking! -- Steve | |
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