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And you think Seattle is getting rain...
Jan. 10th, 2006 06:06 pmBeen reading Life Not As We Know It, and getting some very good ideas (as well as a boost to my knowledge of biology, which has always been a weak point in my science knowledge.)
The book had a section discussing the heavy bombardment period (roughly 4.4 - 3.9 billion years ago.) Late in this period, Earth was already an ocean world, but each massive impact pretty much vaporized the oceans and left us with a steam-bath environment for a few thousand years before things cooled down. As things cooled, and those megatons of water rained down, refilling basins.
Until the next impact.
Which made me wonder... Imagine a colony on a young world still experiencing this cycle. A young world won't have lost all it's radioactives and heavy metals to the core yet.. the mantle is still active enough to keep them close (relatively) to the surface. Since there's no ecology, mining corporations would be free to be as destructive as they like in pursuit of these elements.
Put the colony in during the cooling phase, and you get a wonderful setting. Rain, torrential rain, all across the world. Rivers that defy the imagination tearing channels as they flow to the lowlands, carving nightmarishly deep valleys. A world of perpetual gloom and unending clouds.
I like it.
The book had a section discussing the heavy bombardment period (roughly 4.4 - 3.9 billion years ago.) Late in this period, Earth was already an ocean world, but each massive impact pretty much vaporized the oceans and left us with a steam-bath environment for a few thousand years before things cooled down. As things cooled, and those megatons of water rained down, refilling basins.
Until the next impact.
Which made me wonder... Imagine a colony on a young world still experiencing this cycle. A young world won't have lost all it's radioactives and heavy metals to the core yet.. the mantle is still active enough to keep them close (relatively) to the surface. Since there's no ecology, mining corporations would be free to be as destructive as they like in pursuit of these elements.
Put the colony in during the cooling phase, and you get a wonderful setting. Rain, torrential rain, all across the world. Rivers that defy the imagination tearing channels as they flow to the lowlands, carving nightmarishly deep valleys. A world of perpetual gloom and unending clouds.
I like it.
