stellar anatomy in world building

[@acollierastro]

Ok why spider aliens so popular?? Why not octopus aliens?

[@VirginiaTrio]

I agree, but also elephants. Been doing a lot of world building on a scifi fantasy series I want to do and this gave me a lot more to think about, thanks so much.

[@D4v1d-Gr43b3r]

This!! the aliens in Blindsight/Echopraxia (by Peter Watts) are inspired by octopuses: they shapeshift and have decentralized nervous systems, and really feel like an "alien alien".

[@fungoose2195]

brain aliens...

[@RavenZahadoom]

At the risk of taking the question too seriously; Our planet belongs to the insects, they out number almost everything we could call an animal. Yes I know spiders are not insects, but for the public they are interchangeable. So the idea of insect life evolving somewhere else seems more plausible (perhaps?) add in a common human fear (spiders) and it becomes a natural subject for a sci-fi writer to explore. Ofcouse the question of intelligence is often overlooked, not to mention size. But I think that comes down to many writers not really looking into biology when thinking about aliens (i.e maximum body size being dependant on the oxygen content of the atmosphere) after all they would probably argue that there are enough planets out there for almost anything to be possible. More grounded sci-fi is more enjoyable if it's written well, but it's probably easier to write high sci-fi and less 'rules' makes more compelling stories? (maybe) In anycase, have you watched The Expanse Angela? While it certainly has some wild sci-fi elements, it's much much more grounded compared to popular sci-fi. I wonder what you would think of it?

[@GoldenMinotaur]

Didn't the news try and convince everyone that "scientists" believed octopus were aliens because of a misinterpreted analogy a few years ago?

[@elplatt]

The discussion of tidal locking reminded me of one of my favorite physics book quotes from Sussman & Wisdom: "We can take parameters appropriate for the Moon and find that Mr. Moon does not constantly point the same face to the Earth, but instead constantly shakes his head in dismay at what goes on here."

[@glocrowhurst]

Thank you for sharing this. Delightful.

[@cubez9]

"We can make it work, We can fix her" The desperation in your voice I'd watch/read that struggling plotline

[@LimeyLassen]

Trying to make it work in a weird solar system is the whole plot of The Three Body Problem

[@mrptr9013]

​@@LimeyLassenonly the first book, and only inside the game.

[@AndrewMilesMurphy]

Nobody, not a soul: this solar system is over-rated

[@Sol1496]

Larry Niven's The Integral Trees has a whole ecosystem that grew up in a gas cloud around a neutron star. There was even a nursery rhyme to teach kids orbital mechanics in case they end up adrift.

[@mimigaamigo7099]

Ah good, I came to the comments to recommend The Integral Trees. I'm glad I'm not the only one, but kind of sad how far I had to scroll to find it recommended.

[@ldiajvclxizo]

I loved the ideas in that book when I was a kid. I wonder how it holds up.

[@isomeme]

@@ldiajvclxizo , like most Niven, the ideas are amazing, but the characters are weak. I recommended another Niven (with Cooper) novel elsewhere in this discussion, _Building Harlequin's Mom_, which follows the same pattern.

[@SnakebitSTI]

Yeah, The Integral Trees has a very meh story. But the ecosystem is so cool!

[@belg4mit]

@@isomeme BHM is okay, but the intergenerational relationships are a little skeevy. In any event "characters" is a common criticism of Niven, but I read hard SF to play with the ideas. I'd pick up Shakespeare or Austen if character development was my top priority.

[@somewhatboxes]

i feel like i need 30 minutes every week where you casually scroll through NASA photos and footage and just react to how rad space is

[@badabing3391]

i wanna touch the sun (and not get harmed)

[@IstasPumaNevada]

I would not mind that at all.

[@BjerkeRobin]

I second this motion ❤

[@lucywucyyy]

i love looking at nasa photos

[@scisher3294]

I agree. MOAR THIS!

[@ChaosPootato]

Love the sun plushie, it looks goofy as hell

[@SRHtheHedgehog]

They have a whole series of these, I've seen them on Amazon. They're all fantastic. Mercury wears lil running shoes with wings on them

[@Broockle]

i didn't get that that's a sun plushie at all 😅

[@livi0in0sin]

Mark 9:43: "And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched, for that place is goofy."

[@KwizzyDaAwesome]

I'm always complaining that the hard sci-fi feels like the moral of the story is "don't go to space because you'll all die horribly" and it's like "yay, science..?"

[@personzorz]

I mean that's the truth.

[@UhOhUmm]

That's why I loved the Expanse when I first read it, just enough hard science mixed with some magic to make it not such so much. Our universe sucks.

[@GrantWaller.-hf6jn]

Same for large bodies of water.

[@Broockle]

@@personzorz there's so much we don't know. A creative writer should be able to come up with ways for space travel to work and make less depressing stories

[@GrantWaller.-hf6jn]

Life will kill you too. I should ask for that list so I can say nope. And after seeing the movie dinosaur when my son was little. I asked him after the movie why the dinosaurs die. He said the meteor. Well that's the theory. And they were stupid they never left the planet and died. Few we humans do leave soon or later we be gone as well. Like all things it is not for everyone. So many will not want to leave Terra ferma. That's okay too.

[@AdelaideRitzman]

The inciting plot device in Scavengers Reign (HBO Max) is that a long-haul cargo freighter passes by a star in the path of a coronal mass ejection / solar flare and the crew has to evacuate to the alien planet below. The show is a tense, edge-of-your-seat, 10/10 binge. It's stellar, pun intended.

[@mebibyte9347]

"I'm not a writer" accidentally comes up with a badass entire world building premise with class struggles and status quo and room for a catalyst event that upends the power structures. Girl you just wrote one, how am I supposed to write your book and just give you an acknowledgement

[@pyrosianheir]

I mean... good ideas/worldbuilding are just the start. Gotta get more than that going to be a writer. Source: I'm a wannabe writer who can do well sometimes, but is also largely lacking in a couple specific things needed to get published

[@volentimeh]

@@pyrosianheir yea doesn't matter how good your prompt is if you can't write good characters/dialogue with a coherent plot ect.

[@whnvr]

this is literally the book i'm writing, so this video has me shook

[@orbatos]

Don't forget the dominant fungus flora (fauna?)

[@LimeyLassen]

"Class disparity in a weird environment" is absolutely one of the pillars of sci fi

[@mosesgunn6937]

“Inconstant Moon” by Larry Niven is a good short story on this subject.

[@molochi]

I'm still a fan of Niven. He's one of those sci-fi writers that wrote his stories around neat ideas that were floating around in the scientific community of the day. Bussard Ram Jets, the most unusual planet in the Galaxy, the idea of heat pollution, Etc.. of course most of his known space stuff has a lot of fantasy in it like psychic powers, hyperspace, and unobtanium that allows a relatively small Interstellar community to exist. My favorite was his collab with Pournel, Footfall. Lucifer's Hammer is another one, A dark look at what happens when something big hits the Earth.

[@MichaelZeagler]

There's also his short story "flare time" which is totally cool.

[@auturgicflosculator2183]

@@molochi Those two make an awesome writing pair...my favorite of theirs has got to be The Mote in God's Eye and its sequel. Great read, fascinating aliens.

[@chad872]

love that you casually insert words like "big boy" into detailed discussion of stellar anatomy

[@physicsnerd02]

I actually tried to make a similar world-building story in a book once. I had an extra elective my senior year, so I took a creative writing class. My class project ended up being the first three chapters of a book. The book's world wasn't tidal-locked, but it's axis pointed to their sun. One side was hot, one side was cold, the magic was Fire vs Ice, and people could only live on the equator in the shade of an equatorial mountain range. Since people could only live in the region of perpetual twilight, that's what I named it. Twilight. In 2002. I got an A+. Luckily the teacher had never read Dragonlance, cause he would have seen heavy inspiration in the naming, etc. Four years later I had some free time and went to finish it and got the rudest awakenings of my life.

[@breadlord3608]

what do you mean by "the rudest awakenings of your entire life"? that sounds very cool, if you published i'd love to read

[@physicsnerd02]

@@breadlord3608 In between me submitting the project and going back to finish the book, Stephanie Meyer released an incredibly popular book of the same name. In all honesty I should have finished it, and maybe one day I will, but it'll have to be a different title :)

[@breadlord3608]

@@physicsnerd02 ohhh teehee the name is tainted now, can definitely see why you didn't complete it, hope it goes well 🫡

[@trainzack]

If the axis is pointed directly at the sun at one point in the orbit, then the half that is shaded would change over the course of the year.

[@iambad]

Dragon's Egg is a hard sci-fi-themed novel about the evolution of life on a neutron star. It's not about a red dwarf, but it's at least about what life might look like in unusual circumstances.

[@spore124]

That's what I was going to recommend. One of my favorites, even if the the human characters are shallower than the the thickness of the pancake-like aliens. Fun book.

[@Flesh_Wizard]

"DRAGON DEEZ NU-" *gets obliterated by pulsar beam*

[@Ryukachoo]

Damnit I was literally about to post dragons egg, talk about the far edge of what's possible with life

[@auturgicflosculator2183]

Also Starquake, the sequel. Love those books~🧡

[@Georgewilliamherbert]

Robert L Forward, who wrote that series, was a physicist.

[@brandoncoventry5662]

The three body problem is a great sci-fi story around implications of multi sun dynamics

[@silver-ep8wn]

yess!! I wanted to mention it but u did it first

[@justmauldie]

bro would love a review from her

[@scott_hunts]

I like it quite a bit, despite the pacing issues. The Netflix series is pretty good but can’t hold a candle to the books imo.

[@BeCurieUs]

I imagine she has read it, but it is still one of my favorites. The dark forest will forever change how I think of humans and how we should approach space

[@isomeme]

@@brandoncoventry5662 , except the Trisolaran orbital dynamics would never work as described. The planet would almost certainly be ejected from the system within a few million years of reaching the described state. Life wouldn't have time to evolve.

[@chaselake3585]

Looking forward to all the sci-fi books in 3 years with SUPER detailed descriptions of the nearby suns and all their spots

[@MuchMoreMatt]

Speaking of the Sun, I did not expect to see a solar prominence with my own eyes like the one I saw during the total eclipse.

[@davidedwards9141]

I saw it too!

[@idontwantahandlethough]

Eclipses? Prominences? Luckyyyyy...

[@adora_was_taken]

yeah! that was so insanely cool to see

[@Alex-js5lg]

It was surreal, right? I totally underestimated how big the "rest" of the sun was.

[@GrantWaller.-hf6jn]

Weclome to the club I saw totality in 2017. Sat this one out.

[@bnightm]

Speaking of sci-fi books involving our Sun. David Brin's Sundiver has a thermodynamics defying spaceship that travels across our suns chromosphere. And then there's Andy Weir's Project Hail May which centers around the discovery of mysterious sun spots.

[@thekingofmars8858]

I feel like you've almost certainly read it but Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary has a bunch of stuff about the sun being obscured. Also just a great book in general.

[@gpaciga]

This is the one I was going to mention too

[@grimruin]

"Nightfall" by Asimov is a cool story about a planet that's in (almost...) perpetual daylight because of its six suns.

[@RideAcrossTheRiver]

"Waiting for the Earthquake" is similar, by Robert Silverberg.

[@p_the_d]

you're the best! love love love your content.

[@georgeparkins777]

Have you read “Eon” by Greg Bear? It’s not really hard sci fi but it at least tries to give a speculative physics explanation for everything. Basically a spaceship from our future made out of the hollowed-out mass of 3 Juno comes back in time and it becomes clear that inside it is this infinite tube of artificial curved space time that gives access to arbitrary numbers of parallel universes. It has a lot of really cool ideas including some really well-thought out stuff about living inside a rotating asteroid. EDIT: I said Vesta instead of Juno

[@chris.hinsley]

Eternity the sequel is also great.

[@ToNowHereShow]

Anything Greg Bear is interesting. The Forge of God looks at how a genocidal alien race might use microscopic black holes to kill planets. His short stories include ideas like a 3D human encountering a 4D geometrical being kinda like Flatland.

[@y2kkmac]

I had the chance to use a spectrohelioscope once. It was *really* cool being able to adjust the frequency I was observing the sun in and seeing the image change. I think the band pass on that thing was something like 0.6A at the widest depending on which size exit slit they use, which is absolutely bonkers to think about.

[@YayComity]

The sci-fi book that rocked my world when I was a boy was The White Mountains by John Christopher. It's also known as the "tripod trilogy" and it's about a dystopian future where a young boy fights back against aliens who have enslaved humans by "capping" them when they become teenagers (I just spoiled the beginning). It's simple and short and not quite as heavily sciency as I gather you crave, It's kind of an allegory on intellectual and actual freedom and loss of independent thinking that is imposed on people who grow up. Maybe akin to a simpler and far less graphic Hunger Games. It's such an easy and provocative read that I recommend it to anyone, and there are two more books if you get into it.

[@bipcuds]

Ah yes, along with the City of Gold and Lead, and ... the third one. I found out about the trilogy from Boys' Life magazine back in the day (it was a graphic serial in the comics section). Scout Life never has stuff that dystopian today (or even literature-based).

[@arctic_haze]

You have became one of my favorite science communicators. By the way, sun spots do not dim the sun. Actually the more sun spots we see, the brighter the sun is. This is caused by the areas around the sun spot getting brighter. But maybe it does not works this way on the red giants.

[@dcisrael]

Brighter because of the solar facula.

[@arctic_haze]

@@dcisrael Exactly.

[@Maou3]

She gave an example in the video of a star that is variably dimmed by flaring activity en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AU_Microscopii

[@arctic_haze]

@@Maou3 Yes, but I think the dimming factor is the expelled cloud of dust, not a starspot.

[@A.F.Whitepigeon]

It doesn't matter for this discussion. The fact that the brightness changes dramatically would cause the same problems either way. Just move the planet farther out and make the same argument for low-activity periods.

[@eggyparrot3844]

A tidal locked Earth-Moon like system around a red dwarf as mentioned at 18:30 would be a really cool scifi setting. Rather than a too hot side and a too cold side with a livable ring around the border, you could have a dark side and a light side that has a permanent dark spot in the middle. That could create some wacky weather patterns and interesting world building opportunities

[@DrinkyMcBeer]

I wonder how close they'd have to be to the star for the moon to radiate enough heat to warm the dark spot on the planet enough to be livable. Like a zone of life surrounded by a sea of molten crust that eventually turns into a frozen wasteland .

[@seanwright4976]

Why couldn't the planet just be far enough away to get the light side to about the right temperature

[@BeCurieUs]

@@DrinkyMcBeer Dude I left that exact comment. Like the moon is the real life place and the planet is like a glow stone of constant temperature. You still have the problem of the moon only getting lit on one side, but neat nonetheless. With a system like this, too, you could depend on the state of lighting, as well. So while it might be dim, it would be predictable. Life likes that.

[@anyprophet]

the Revelation Space series from Alastair Reynolds is great. humanity can travel between stars but cannot go faster than the speed of light. this has a lot of wild consequences on the world building he does. he has a PHD in astrophysics and worked for the ESA and it shows.

[@antony1397]

Your videos help get me in a more productive mood after a bad night of sleep. Thank you and keep doing what you do.

[@astasaidak7736]

I actually am writing a sci fi novel and I will 100% credit you, your other video on the deadliest pattern sparked my curiosity and has opened a whole new world for me. I’d love to send you a copy of the manuscript once I have one completed

[@DontMockMySmock]

Verner Vinge! I love the crazy concepts in his "zones of thought" "trilogy". If you haven't read "A Fire Upon the Deep" you should.

[@IsaacSchlueter]

I felt like Deepness in the Sky was much better than Fire on the Deep. As a software developer, I found that their time system was epoch.

[@IsaacSchlueter]

(In that it's fan service for those of us who routinely count time from 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z, the "Unix Epoch", which must seem like an extremely arbitrary moment for someone living in the distant space-faring future, and just close enough to the moon landing that it must seem exceptionally weird to be several Msecs off.)

[@queenvrook]

Arguably (and by survey) the best science fiction story ever written, "Nightfall" by Isaac Asimov, is about a planet in a six-sun system where night only occurs once every 2,000 years, worth reading

[@D4v1d-Gr43b3r]

21:00 Incandescence by Greg Egan! the exo"planet" is within an accretion disk around a neutron star, and how the aliens talk about geography/topology is very interesting.

[@CaidYT]

Great tip. The development of physics theory in the alien race is a neat thought experiment!

[@adjoint_functor]

god imagine evolution under GR effects

[@tortenschachtel9498]

In the movie "Sunshine" the sun was reducing its output for some reason, but that was mostly used as a backdrop for the story to happen (and a lot of the physics in the movie makes little sense).

[@antonnurwald5700]

I did like the scene where the guy is just casually incinerated as he gets into direct sunlight though.

[@briannenurse4640]

"Big Honkin' Bois" ah yes, my favourite unit of measurement

[@LimeyLassen]

"Absolute Unit" sounds more precise to me

[@robertarmstrong3024]

Thanks!

[@TCGBulkKings]

I highly recommend Neal Stephenson, especially Seveneves and Anathem, for your particular interests. Anathem has a bit of multiverse annoyingness, but not a huge amount, and it approaches it really interestingly in my opinion. Also, for more history of science/philosophy, try his Baroque Cycle

[@Nobody_Nowhere_Never]

I'll second Mr Stephenson. Spiders seem to be a theme around here, so you'll love the portids in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time.

[@RobExNihilo]

_Seveneves_ would also be my first suggestion.

[@dankelleyns]

I second this recommendation. I preferred Anathem to Seveneves, partly because it reads less like a zeroth draft of a movie script. Anathem is a bit harder to get into (with the made-up words and so forth) but when you get into that river, you'll lose sight of the shore and forget why you cared about it.

[@METT-TC]

I need to mention Project Hail Mary, it's a phenomenal book by Andy weir, same guy who did the martian. It is one of the most joyous reads I have had in a long time. It is so good. Hard to describe just how much I enjoyed it. The main plot conceit, is that something is wrong with the sun, it is slowly getting dimmer, and in a century or two it will kill all of us. Humanity sends an expedition with our protagonist on it, to a different star system to maybe unlock the secret and find a solution. I am normally somebody who doesn't care about spoilers, but I fully suggest going into this as blind as possible and avoiding any and all spoilers, to keep the stakes high.

[@cmmartti]

She's read it! kzbin.info/www/bejne/eoPRZGCDg55lfpYsi=Z5h4UyPwzEgRGEgd&t=512 Personally, I rate The Martian way above Weir's other books. It seemed less far-fetched and I really connected with the character Mark Watney.

[@METT-TC]

@@cmmartti excellent! I thought she had but the fact she didn't mention the sun dimming element of the plot in this video made me wonder. I hope someone else finds PHM because of my comment at least! I loved both the Martian and PHM in different ways. I read the Martian literally in a single night when it was only easily available as a PDF back in like 2013, I loved it so much that as soon as it went to print I bought one for basically my entire family. I read PHM over a couple days and absolutely adored it, it was so different from what I was expecting and I think I actually related to Ryland Grace more than I did Mark Watney, not to mention the other character but that would be spoilers lol. Just the raw unvarnished curiosity and wonder that oozes from those pages, it's wonderful. My wife and I listened to the audiobook in one shot on a loooong cross country road trip, she was absolutely entranced. Honestly, the audiobook might be better than the print, just in how they handle... Sounds and music... In a really fun way that totally enhances everything. I love that book haha.

[@cmmartti]

@@METT-TC I actually listened to the audiobook when I read it, it was a good narration (not as good as RC Bray) and it was definitely a good story, but there were some elements of it that I really really disliked; namely, the absolute absurdity and impossibility of the situation made it impossible to properly immerse myself (a bit of an uncanny valley situation), and the SPOILERS ending where she decides to abandon earth in favour of some creepy aliens, as well as some other things. And is that the name of the main character? I'd forgotten. I've read The Martian probably a dozen times and Artemis 2-3 times, but Project Hail Mary only the once. I tend to not re-read books that don't have happy endings. The Martian is an easy 100 for me, while Artemis is an 85, and PHM is a 65. PHM was passable, I mostly enjoyed it, but it wasn't for me.

[@METT-TC]

@@cmmartti ALL SPOILERS BELOW FOR A BOOK I LIKE AND THINK BENEFITS FROM NOT BEING SPOILED ----------------------------------- IMO, the story skirted just inside the "Suspension of disbelief" threshold, I think there was only a little handwavium involved, but the majority of the rest of the science seemed great to my inexpert eye. (Matter-> Energy astrophage is pretty goofy and Xenonite is too, but every story needs a maguffin and sure, maybe their materials science is just miles ahead of ours, like we are with things like relativity.) Eh, I've gotta disagree with you but you're welcome to your opinion. It's a matter of taste I guess. I didn't find rocky's people to be creepy, they were very well rounded to me and they treated him better than basically any human ever did. I ABSOLUTELY saw PHM's ending as happy! He FINALLY makes a selfless decision to save his friend and their entire species when at every stage in his life previously he's rejected that element of selflessness. This could be a heroic self-sacrifice, send the beetle off to earth, then let Rocky get back to their people, but instead of this bittersweet ending he gets to be the honored guest of a culture he's come to love, holding a position as a teacher that he truly enjoys, and, he finds out that his actions saved the Earth. That maybe it'd be alright after all, even though they lied to him, scammed him, and ultimately shanghai'd him onto the ship. That is literally the best possible ending in my view. For me, the Martain is a solid 95, PHM is a 100, and I haven't read Artemis yet lol. It's in my kindle library, I just need to finish finals first. ...Yeah to be fair "Ryland Grace" is a terrible name lmao. Mark Watney is a much better name. I'm glad you liked the other books though!

[@dontron810]

The Expanse is pretty solid

[@ReinReads]

A solid SciFi tv series that fades towards the end. The books are just meh

[@jorgepeterbarton]

yes its sound, until the 'alien stuff' anyway then whee some molecules go around building wormholes and messing with inertia and life and stuff but that's ok another terrorist liberator is doing terrorism so all that we build for with that kinda gets an 'omg stargate' for 5 minutes then we go back to being shitty humans.. I am impressed by the understanding of inertia and gravity in spaceflight though. No one instantly freezing in space! that puts it on god-tier level above 98% of space sci fi where someone freezes instantly in space.

[@BeCurieUs]

@@ReinReads the books are my favorite space opera, with perhaps not my most favorite ending, but very solid. The show was equally good if a bit rushed for the ending. I imagine she has read both :D

[@jacohop]

This was a pleasure to watch! So much information I haven’t heard before and brilliant presentation. Your interest / enthusiasm really drew me in.

[@ryanbrown982]

Stephen Baxter's Proxima and Ultima feature a world around Proxima centauri which is tidally locked and has a very basic biosphere on it. Interesting concepts, but it felt like he didn't really know how to end it.

[@mhf1983]

It's been a while, but i remember solar flares featured in there, which hugely impact the life there

[@ryanbrown982]

@@mhf1983 Yeah, I think so? But he seemed less interested in the biology of that planet than the silly, much less interesting in my opinion, multiverse plot.

[@atarisidequest]

Baxter has been exploring stars since his earliest books. Flux explores a neutron star in a binary system and Ring explores the evolution of the sun over long timescales using a sentient probe.

[@mhf1983]

​@@ryanbrown982 true, that's what turned me off to the sequel

Just wanted to say that it makes me happy to see Bea Wolf in the background every time, because it is such a great book

[@Hoodges157]

HA! YES! SCIENCE AND STORYTELLING SIGN ME THE HELL UP

[@mymom1462]

Been watching and catching up on Tamitha Skov's work and glad you touched on this now.

[@BrianFedirko]

I got to visit Mt. Wilson observatory, off season when my cousin took me up teching helicopters landing up there. I walked through the "museum" of plates that Hubble himself took of sunspots up there. It was incredible to understand the physics, and historically how it was done back then. If anybody has the chance to go up there and view the grounds and the telescope, take it by all means. It will be something special in my memory always. Gr8! Peace ☮💜Love

[@patrickdaly1088]

"The Mote in God's Eye" by Niven and Pournelle had some really cool aliens that weren't really so huge of a stretch, but the authors did a really good job playing in the space they set up.

[@FelipeMCSA]

Dr. Collier can talk about ANY topic, and I still would love to hear about it.

[@theshowmanuk]

What is amazing is an explanation of Sun spot activity and ends up in stellar anatomy and more. Love your channel.

[@laynewebb5986]

I'm also one of those people that overthinks the worldbuilding for a book I'm never going to write. My world features a moon with a highly elliptical orbit, tidally locked at perigee. Hearing you describe the same idea felt like a fever dream lol.

[@Broockle]

w8 is that different from how our moon orbits? srr, that part was a bit confusing to me I guess 😅 The way I understood it is that the moon still rotates around its own axis but always comes to the same orientation relative to earth at the nearest point from earth in the orbit. Tho, that's prbly wrong, since, that's just not a "locked" situation at all.. at least in my mind. Or maybe the moon's rotation "unlocks" (srr 😆) when the distance between the planet and the moon increases again.

[@ChristopherSadlowski]

write. this. book. Write this book. WRITE THIS BOOK! I'm so intrigued right now! Maybe a short story if a whole ass book is too much to fit in.

[@ChristopherSadlowski]

​@@Broockle my guess is that your last idea is the correct one. At last that's how I read OP's comment. The moon is fine, it's doing fine, rotating like a good boy, and then all of a sudden everyone's like, "Oh no, we've hit our regular periodic tidal lock but this time we're facing the Sun directly until rotation starts again!"

[@Broockle]

@@ChristopherSadlowski icic, I got there while writing, it ended up making the most sense to me too.

[@lawrencenienart860]

The 2007 movie "sunshine" is quite good. No sunspots specifically involved in the movie, but folks are trying to revive the dying sun with a nuclear device. Some scenes of being both frozen and baked in space I found to be realistic...and disturbing.

[@nicholaslogan6840]

the sun has spots because it's half dalmatian

[@d3rpn1nj47]

Kind of a long video for that explanation but still good

[@GrantWaller.-hf6jn]

Some people love to talk and she does give alot of information. Like she said in the diameter of an atom video. Skip ahead to X.

[@d3rpn1nj47]

@@GrantWaller.-hf6jn sorry dry humor alert, video is fantastic. I was acting like she spent 35 minutes on how the sun was actually half dalmatian

[@GrantWaller.-hf6jn]

​@@d3rpn1nj47you don't have to apologize. It's your God given right to say whatever however. Hell you can tell me to F off for my response to you.

[@billfielder67]

It's probably only 1/3 dalmation.Because i'm seeing quite a bit of lab and poodle

[@AtaraxianWist]

My fantasy worldbuilding actually relies on a sci-fi past, and solar anatomy is actually SUPER important to it so thank you for this video.

[@nony314]

Magnetic field lines 'snap'!? Didn't think you'd be a monopole believer! 😂 Nice job as usual. Thank you.

[@davidhand9721]

Can you recommend a good source for how magnetic fields "snap" IRL? I mean, obviously, Maxwell's equations, it doesn't work, but it does happen, right? Is there some kind of topological defect involved?

[@NullHand]

The phenomenon is formally called magnetic reconnection. A means by which plasmas can "relax" into a lower energy magnetic topology.

[@loislane5092]

Hi Angela, about the brightness during a partial solar eclipse as discussed around timecode 23':08''. Perhaps not at 30%, or even 60%, but I was in a partial eclipse of about 90% in 1999 and everything turned an eerie gray which is hard to describe. It was almost like being in a black&white picture. The feeling is impossible to capture on film. You're surrounded by a strange grayness. It's not at all like twilight or sunset. It's very different than when it simply gets dark or there are heavy clouds. It was literally gray, i.e. the world seemed to turn gray. Quite a strange feeling.

[@mcolville]

There's a little black spot on the sun today....

[@Dimitrishuter]

Oh hey it's you

[@EthanHaluzaDelay]

It's always strange to find your favourite creators pop up in each other's comments.

[@AlanW]

Someone once said, it's Gordon's soul up there.

[@pseudotasuki]

And now that's gonna be stuck in my head all day.

[@carlosgaspar8447]

it's the same old thing as yesterday. it's mercury.

[@chris.hinsley]

“Nights Dawn” Trilogy by Peter F Hamilton ! Superb.

[@RickeyBowers]

You had me at practical Sci-Fi.

[@DamienWells]

You know, I'm not writing a sci-fi novel (right now) but I did just start a little research project in pursuit of fantasy worldbuilding where I spent a weekend brainstorming and doing calculations for a habitable planet suspended in the barycenter of a black hole/giant star binary system. The idea was for the planet's "day" to be determined by the orbital period of the system, but for the 2 regions to overlap it becomes MUCH longer than any reasonable approximation of a "day" (about 10.5 years at the lowest). There's a whole other host of problems like how there's no way for long term stability for the planet's position (without some form of propulsion/correction), and just about everything in this video :') You've given me so much to dig into to build even more extreme, and hopefully scientifically robust, worlds!

[@henghistbluetooth7882]

The sun has layers, onions have layers, I have layers. Layers Donkey!

[@poisonhemlock]

I'd love to hear the creation myths of a civilization whose sun spends one season brutalizing the surface, two seasons travelling, and one season completely absent.

[@ravenlord4]

Maybe a habitable moon around a gas giant in a red dwarf system? Even if the entire system eventually tidal locks, the moon could be getting heat from both sides from the planet and the star. Plus the planet's magnetic field could help shield the moon from the star's activity. And if the moon had a lot of ocean, that could help distribute and equalize (or at least mitigate) the global temperature gradient.

[@deheavon6670]

Late reply, but if a planet is close enough to tidal lock, it would be unlikely to have a moon in an stable orbit. It might if the star is relatively large (~ 0.2 solar masses) but then the moon would rotate faster than the primary spins (if it tidally locks - it might not) and would spiral in over the course of several billion years.

[@Blackmuhahah]

I second Dragon's Egg, it gives you a very fun view on a possible different world and how it could evolve with how astronomical events shape a whole world

[@seashelly6387]

I read that story when I was a teenager and it blew my mind. It's so strange and wholesome, there's nothing like it.

[@pendarvis]

There's a little black spot on the sun today? it's the same old thing as yesterday.

[@quangobaud]

Gordon Sumner salutes you, comrade! 🔥

[@blueandgreenslacks]

To be fair the song is referencing when mercury passes in front of the sun. The little black spot is mercury.

[@Imperiused]

One of the speculations I've heard with eyeball (tidally locked) planets is that, given life would develop in the eternal twilight of the light/dark transition, organisms that rely on photosynthesis might be black instead of green. It would also be INCREDIBLY windy with convection currents, so I imagine those same analogous plants would grow very close to the ground.

[@wowhow8401]

The book In The House Of the Worm, by George R. R. Martin, is set on a planet that is slowly going cold because their star is completely consumed by dark patches

[@chrisl6546]

Hal Clement wrote a lot of hard science fiction that included a variety of planet types with characteristics that we might say "wow, you couldn't come up with life there", but he generally did a good job with energy flows and phase transitions and things to make up a story of how there could be life. His characters are pretty cheesy 50's science fiction, but the technical details are pretty good.

[@TAFMSV]

Was just scanning through here looking for Cycle of Fire.

[@Caterpillar0fDoom]

Why is the sun spotted? Well, it'd be pretty hard not to

[@wilhelmschmidt7240]

21:22 The Helliconia series is very interesting world building in a similar way, extended warm/cold cycles creating distinct species to thrive at different times.

[@justinwallace8708]

Quantum $$$ so, quantum entangled calendars? I like this idea.

[@loubrosseau5729]

I get so excited every time I see you've uploaded a video on any of your channels, thank you so much 💛

[@woges5093]

The universe is basically a giant death trap in which everything is trying to kill us. I reckon that's as good a start as any.

[@woges5093]

I dig sun man.

[@Vistico93]

I figure most of the Universe is 100% hostile to life while small slivers of it, like Earth, are merely only 99% hostile to it and that Life took that 1% and ran with it

[@jorgepeterbarton]

its not even trying, man, it just does

[@coachtaewherbalife8817]

I finally got around to watching this video and I had to tell you I appreciate the info. Cleared up a lot of my misconceptions.

[@riku213]

I live for that nice at 9:59 e: Operation Hail Mary by Andy Weir had little spacebacteria that fed off solar radiation (or something I can't remember exactly) that reproduced exponentially and started dimming the sun. This is not necessarily a recommendation, the physics of the spacebugs don't make a lot of sense probably, though I'm not a physicist.

[@alfford6438]

Respectfully, Dr Collier, I will not use any of your ideas in my science fiction, but I will thank you in my acknowledgments. Your content inspires me in a different way. I would never send you a copy of my book, though. It depicts anti-matter engines.

[@ktktktktktktkt]

"The sun is like an onion" It has layers? Like Shrek?

[@almightysapling]

thatsthejoke.jpg

[@jorgepeterbarton]

no because it makes your eyes water

[@Flesh_Wizard]

sunion

[@literallyjustgrass]

I was thinking of the safety onion, the outer layer being "do not get any closer to the sun" and the center being "try not to die to the sun"

[@kostis2849]

at some point you should connect that scope to the wall plug and see cool lines! Scopes are awesome.

[@CavemanWizard]

I feel like your channel would be a perfect fit for Nebula

[@kylork0]

I never have to make myself watch your videos all the way through cuz they're just too good. Keep up the creative content.

[@shracc]

A sun just dipping in brightness for a few months should not be a big issue, there is a thing called winter on earth.

[@shracc]

While it does not affect the entire planet at once I believe that it still shows how plants and animals would adapt to sunspots on a red dwarf.

[@Kilner_Carpenter4015]

I cannot believe this. I am actually currently working on a hard sci-fi novel featuring a binary planet system orbiting a dwarf star. This has helped a great deal with the worldbuilding hurdles I was afraid I was going to have to handwave! You will be thanked in the acknowledgements!

[@TVhuk]

CME react video, what a time to be alive

[@talhaashraf6332]

I literally just attended a meeting where a physicist explained his research on this exact topic. Crazy how the world works.

[@dimm__]

was it recorded? id love to hear it

[@SonorianBnS]

The 3 body problem isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, but it has some very angry stars

[@oasntet]

Currently a bit into the second book myself. I generally enjoyed the show but got the feeling the show runners don't actually understand hard sci-fi. The books maybe lean too far into explaining everything, but it is undoubtedly hard sci-fi. I do wonder about the plausibility of a three-star system being stable enough for long enough for life to evolve on a planet getting passed around between them...

[@Furore2323]

This such a cool channel, I don't even know what a physics is but I can still follow most of what you're saying.

[@md-nw6br]

Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin!!!

[@juanma4978]

the sunlit man from brandon sanderson is a novel where the planet is very close to the sun so the society evolves to keep moving and staying in the border between cold and literally lava. Sadly (for new readers) its inside a greater saga of fantasy (starting to move to scifi) called the stormlight archives. i really recommend it tho, is one of my favourite series. great vid!!

[@Saitama62181]

How could it not be spotted. I look up during the day, if it's not too cloudy, I can spot the sun immediately. Oh, wait... that's not what you meant... never mind

[@brahms_iv1829]

This was such a fun watch! The way you walk through the concepts is really helpful and interesting. I do want to catch for anyone else who was learning like me (through videos only, not school) that Apogee/Perigee are specific to earth-orbiting objects. For general terms, I think the preferred term is Apoapsis/Periapsis, where the parent-object is non-specific. Edit: If it doesn't actually matter, then I need to purge this information from my brain 😅

[@talltales798]

Quite simply, I'm in love with the cute nerdy girl talking physics to me and geeking out over sun spots.

[@bluediamonds4911]

Just took my physics final and then you released a video how awesome is that I'm so excited to strap in for another vid

[@M.ezzehri]

First comment ❤

[@catmate8358]

There are desert plants that can remain inactive/dry for many years but when the rain falls they go through the entire cycle of reproduction very quickly, from flowers to seeds in like days. I am not sure though that hibernation periods that would last centuries could work (idea explored in "Three body problem" which I think is not a very good book) because in order to evolve, life needs fairly frequent reproduction. Personally, I think the red dwarfs are not conducive to life and we should concentrate on studying sun-like stars. I am glad you addressed this matter because there's a lot of hype around stars like Trappist and its many planets - which I think is unwarranted.

[@Duckfest]

It's Zaymon. First part is Zay (like say, pay or gay) and the second part doesn't really matter. If you say 'mon' like the first three letter of the word money should work, but saying 'mone' rhyming it to how you would say 'done' works too. Great video. Thanks!

[@kalebdodge775]

I appreciate that your channel is now easier to pronounce.

[@atimholt]

I read a book once called Black Sun about this exact concept: the entire sun gets a sunspot, so to speak. It a Crichton-esque 90s thriller paperback. It is extremely difficult to find information on this book. I think I found info on it again once, but I'm having no luck right now. Here's what I remember: the main character is an amateur astronomer, with a good-sized amateur's telescope in his home. He predicts the coming sun-darkening using a computer simulation. Some group or other (government?) sends two gunmen after him, afraid of the panic he might cause (they don't think he's correct). In the end, he, a woman, and a child they rescue and adopt are able to prep for the world-wide winter out away from society. I remember the epilogue has him playing a song on guitar (lyrics included), and I might remember it ending with them noticing the brightness starting to come back.

[@calliope7479]

I grew up watching a British sitcom called Red Dwarf about a space ship (Red Dwarf) and it’s inhabitants! Not quite what you’re requesting.

[@kennethkatz6782]

I like the big orange tribble in the corner of your roomdesk.

[@LunaJLane]

Thanks for the video. I haven't heard anything about sun spots and how they are actually made. Quite fascinating stuff.

[@LewisGraham-l5p]

Book Recommendation: The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem Not really what you were asking for but highly recommended. Short stories, as much philosophical or short morality tales, rather than pure science fiction stories. Read them at any level you choose. But we do have entropy and a not-quite-Boltzmann brain, a Maxwell daemon of the 2nd order, stochastic dragons and a love poem in the language of tensor algebra (mathematicians, please don’t jump up and down on me). Some stories are stronger than others but the majority more than make up for the few weaker ones.

[@Bassotronics]

Imagine being on a planet where the sun comes out every 50 years and then for the first time in your life you’re seeing the sun appear glowing the beautiful sky blue and then you are amazed at such beauty and then you’ll never see darkness again because of how short life is. And vice versa.

[@aeryngoshawk4818]

I love Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky! Such a cool and weird book. Definitely not the kind of book you requested, but his other books The Peace War and Across Realtime are some older sci-fi books with really cool ideas and stories to tell

[@Jerry-vz4ix]

Vintage Tektronix, pretty cool. I'm guessing it has sentimental value?