Risk Analysis of Planetary Bodies in Systems with Stellar Transmuters

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
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Dear Capsuleers,

after the special Stellar Event in Turnur caused by the Stellar Transmuter Prototype that was anchored to the local star (https://universe.eveonline.com/new-eden-news/breaking-turnur-devastated-by-extreme-stellar-event) there has been a lot of discussion about the potential risks to the other systems in which Amarrian Stellar Transmuter Prototypes are deployed.

A lot of the analysis seems to focus on the number of planets within the system, but this is not a good risk indicator by itself. While it seems clear that the effect of the stellar event dissipates over greater distances, distances between planets are not evenly distributed between systems.

From the event in Turnur, we can establish 2 datapoints: The Planet Turnur I was devastated by the effect, to an degree that burned the whole planetary crust and vaporized the atmosphere. The Planet Turnur II was relatively unaffected.

The Orbital Radius of Turnur I is 0.417 AU.
The Orbital Radius of Turnur II is 2.553 AU.

This is a relatively grand difference in comparison to many other systems. For a very preliminary analysis, we can assume
(a) that planets that are as close or closer to their star as Turnur I face nearly guaranteed destruction.
(b) that planets that are as far away or further from their star as Turnur II are presumably safe.

I have generated a small diagram to show the relative distance of the planets in all relevant systems:

grafik
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We can such say with confidence that Egmar I and Egmar II as well as Vard I are in immediate danger of destruction. The good news is that Vard I and Egmar II are Lava planets, and as such will probably not have large populations and rather resilient facilities.

Egmar I is the closest planet to any star in all three systems and should be a critical target for any evacuation effort.

It is more difficult to estimate the effects in-between the distances we could observe in Turnur. But it is important to note that the following planets are significantly closer to the distance of Turnur I to their Star than Turnur II:

Vard II, III and IV
Egmar III, IV, V, VI and VII (Egmar VIII is around the midpoint in distance between Turnur I and II)

Also, it should be noted that the effect of the Stellar Event might still do signifcant damage and make planets inhospitable even if the damage is lesser than on Turnur I. Even half the energy affecting a planet in comparison to Turnur I might still cook off oceans and superheat the atmosphere, even though it might not burn the planetary crust to a depth of multiple meters and strip off the atmosphere.

As such all of the planets mentioned above should be seen as priority targets for safekeeping and evacuation efforts. Especially Egmar VI should be the object of further studies as it is a temperate planet that is closer than 1 AU to its star and as such a high-risk world.

I will create additional calculations of the effect strength of the Stellar Event and add these once they are finished but these preliminary findings seemed to be important enough to publish immediately for all concerned parties and peer review.

Signed digitally
Scius Falkenhaupt
Kybernaut Researcher

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Have you taken into account stellar size? A planet 0.4 au from a star of X radius is not the same as a planet 0.4 au from a star of 3X radius.

In addition, have you taken into account the (relatively unscathed) survival of Upwell structures at 0.6 au from the Turnur star?

Additionally:

Because you’re dealing with the inverse square law, you get that half energy at only 0.5897 au from Turnur. Which may be why 0.6 au was ‘safe’. But again, that doesn’t tell us anything about the other stars without going ahead and getting into their masses and diameters.

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It should be noted that this event obviously possessed some superluminal qualities, which may or may not have consequences for such an assumption depending on the cause of this superluminal effect.

Secondly, not all “regular” CME events actually perfectly follow this rule due to rather strong effects like interactions with the magnetic field lines and the acceleration provided by the solar wind depending on conditions and even the shape and direction of the release.

If these events do satisfy the inverse square law however, that would indeed give a lot of hope as it would dramatically decrease the strength of the effects for planets further out.

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That is also true, but it is no less true for the OP’s points being made about distances. So, we work with what we can, using the tools we have.

Yup, totally true. However, as I was between the star and P1 when the event went off, and saw no CME, but rather only the damage pulses—and ships and structures on the far side of the star (such as the Stellar Harvester itself, which was opposite the star from P1) suffered the same effects… gonna say this definitely wasn’t anything as straightforward as a CME.

Also, CMEs aren’t superluminal. Should’ve been at least 4 minutes between the energy spike hitting me at only 7M km, and it hitting P1.

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What are the surface temperatures and atmospheric pressures on record for the planets in question?

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We suspect that we will get the data-points we need to account for the differences, sadly.

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Upwell structures were designed to withstand even highly orchestrated assaults by amassed capital ship fleets. As long as the radiation load does not overwhelm critical internal systems, their damage mitigation systems should give them a fairly good chance to survive stellar cataclysms. Baseliner stations are protected by a massive framework of interstellar treaties and thus do not invest as heavily into repelling incoming massive firepower, and this is even more true for planetary installations. Keep in mind that baseliner polities are founded upon heavy taxation, so even in war all but the most vile of them want to capture territory in at least some state of intactness in order to extract taxation revenue.

I feel like any evacuation effort should thus focus on using Upwell structures as refuges.

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Hi… no. The Upwell structures involved can have their shields reinforced in half an hour by a modest-sized fleet of battlecruisers. Those baseliner corporate stations? Before they switched to entosis shielding, reinforcing them took significantly longer, with significantly greater assets in play. And then they added the ‘it doesn’t matter how many doomsdays you fire, we don’t care’ shielding in… YC117, I think.

Those things are bricks. Trust me, I’ve shot at both, while in an ‘amassed capital ship fleet’ (ok, it’s usually amassed supercapitals, but you get the picture).

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Dear Arrendis and other concerned parties,

to answer some questions and provide additional analysis:

Have you taken into account stellar size? A planet 0.4 au from a star of X radius is not the same as a planet 0.4 au from a star of 3X radius.

I did not, but after double checking, the difference in Stellar radius between Turnur and Egmar accounts for 0.0015 AU and between Turnur and Vard for 0.002 AU. As such, it doesn’t change the analysis in a significant way.

In addition, have you taken into account the (relatively unscathed) survival of Upwell structures at 0.6 au from the Turnur star?

The analysis focuses on planetary objects and not on Space Infrastructure. As such, I have not taken these into account.

Because you’re dealing with the inverse square law, you get that half energy at only 0.5897 au from Turnur. Which may be why 0.6 au was ‘safe’.

This is a valuable point. Given the sublimation of space ships and structures in all directions from the star, it seems that the hypothesis that the effect effected was not directional but instead expanded roughly evenly from the Star has merit and should be tested.

Based on the hypothesis that the Stellar Event can be modelled as a point-based radiation burst that acts similar to an expanding sphere, and that the energy of the wave is distributed evenly, we can indeed infer that the energy density of the effect could be modelled as f(e) = g(e)/(r^2 * pi * 4), whereby r is the distance between the star and the planetoid, and g(e) is an unknown function of the dissipation of the energy when travelling away from the source. Sadly, basically all measurements of the effect failed based on sensor overload and as such, g(e) cannot be estimated at this time.

To get a better idea of the nature of g(e), we can set a hypothetical effect as a constant = 1 in this case and compare the results to further observations if the event re-occurs with the other transmuters.

As we do not have any good measurements of the effect, I have indexed the hypothetical strength of the energy burst such that Turnur I would have been affected with a strength of 1 as the baseline.

The following table gives the Turnur-Index for the other planets as well as the intermediate steps:
grafik

The planetoids that would receive more than three quarters of the dose that hit Turnur 1 are marked in red, those that would receive more than half but less than three quarters as orange, and those that would receive less than half as yellow. Please note that even yellow marked planetoids may face signifcant disruption.

Special mention should go to Egmar I which under this model would receive more than twice the effect strength of Turnur I. Given the strength of the effect, the risk that the planet might not only be scorched but actually lose its structural coherence (e.g. become a shattered planet) as significant.

Observations of further Stellar effects and comparison of results with this table should allow the testing of the hypothesis that the Stellar Event follows the inverse square law.

Signed digitally
Scius Falkenhaupt
Kybernaut Researcher

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We do run into further problems, though… ships out past the farthest planet also had their shield and armor stripped, and survived at roughly the same 20% structure condition as ships closer in. But the planets, stations, and Upwells further out were untouched.

Put simply… the energy distribution does not appear to be internally consistent, which makes modelling the potential threat even more difficult.

It may be that the universal damage to ships stemmed from the superluminal effect’s interactions with gravity capacitors and the warp drive systems… but from a data set of 1, we really can’t tell.

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Dear Danuvia Za and other concerned parties,

I collected the requested information in the following table based on the ususal databases. I have not independently verified the content:
grafik

Signed digitally
Scius Falkenhaupt
Kybernaut Researcher

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It may be that the universal damage to ships stemmed from the superluminal effect’s interactions with gravity capacitors and the warp drive systems… but from a data set of 1, we really can’t tell.

We might get to see the hypothesis tested soon, given the observed frequency of fluctuations in Egmar. But I find the thought reasonable that the effect interacted stronger with objects that had gravity capacitators, given that the onset of the effect interacted with the local Stargate network before any other measurable effects materialized.

Signed digitally
Scius Falkenhaupt
Kybernaut Researcher

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I originally asked so that we could judge the habitability of each planet by its surface temperature, pressure, etc. But your data collection of the radius gives me another idea. Perhaps you could add the sun-facing surface area of each planet to your calculations to see the total energy absorbed by each one.

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If i am not mistaken, the radii of both the Vard and Egmar star are significantly smaller than that of turnur, less than half the size in fact.

I am purely speculating here but that might drastically reduce the energy released even further, as of course half the radius means one-eigth the volume. As long as we have no real data publicly available as to the exact physical process generating the burst we can’t really say but it might be that these stars simply have significantly less stellar mass to eject or “transmute” than the turnur star, generating a lower energy event.

I have to say this is some stellar work you have done though.

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