In a message dated 2/21/04 10:58:34 PM Mountain Standard Time, andrewdj54701@yahoo.com writes: > Giving Celandra two moons is a tempting idea, and rather traditional in > fantasy settings, to boot, but what would the consequences of two moons > be? > > With two moons, Celandra's tides would be complex and more difficult to > predict. "More difficult," yes, but not significantly so. The difficulty in calculating tides is based more on the eccentricity of the lunar orbits (and don't forget the third dimension), not on the number of moons. So, unless both lunar orbits are wildly eccentric, any experienced seaman would be able to estimate fairly accurately. However, I can see the growth of a mathematically inclined caste to predict the tides which are more severe than exist on our world. > The size of each moon and the distance from Celandra would > affect tides, as well as the development of calendars. We have a hard > time reconciling lunar and solar time here on Earth, with one moon; how > hard would it be with two? And would the moons be tidally locked to > Earth or not? That all depends on what the creator wanted from the world when he made it. > On a different note, some scientists postulate that a single large moon > is a neccessary requirement for a planet to develop complex life. This > is, of course, untestable at the moment. And probably inapplicable to a world with existent magic. > Of course, before talking about Sun, moons, and planets, we should > answer the question of whether Celandra's cosmology is > Ptolemaic/geocentric or Copernican/heliocentric. It makes a > considerable difference. Well, yes, although not for the things I was thinking about. I was assuming a Newtonian system (via Copernicus, among others) since there's so much real-world data and its what's people are used to. I wasn't assuming an Einsteinean system since so few people actually understand relativity. Jefferson (Exquaestio) http://www.picotech.net/~jeff_wilson63/rpg/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send mail to celandra-off@phoenyx.net.
