This morning I’ll be focusing on the single Earth-like world in the Karjann star system, Toswao, the focus of my play-through of Bios: Genesis and Bios: Megafauna.

Here, I’m getting into world-design procedures that I haven’t fully documented yet. The part of the Architect of Worlds project that’s giving me the most trouble is procedures for working out the properties of individual worlds. I find that there are a lot of contingent factors, many of which have been completely ignored by the world-design systems that I’ve previously found in print, or written myself. Some of those factors are not well-understood even today, or are so complex that no simple model will really capture them. So it’s a challenge to come up with a design sequence that’s coherent, straightforward to apply, and likely to reflect a wide range of plausible results. Research continues.

Of course, for Toswao, a lot of parameters are already set and it’s just a matter of fleshing out details, while checking to make sure there’s nothing wildly implausible. That’s an easier problem.

Let’s start with what we know. Toswao is a terrestrial planet with a mass of 1.18 Earth-masses. I have  a straightforward model for the density of terrestrial bodies, and with one dice roll I can compute that Toswao has an average density of 1.044 times that of Earth (5.72 g/cc). That immediately gives us a planetary radius of 6635 kilometers (1.04 times that of Earth) and a surface gravity of 1.09 G.

Here’s the first big question that most published world-design sequences would ignore: does Toswao have a strong magnetic field?

It turns out that item is important. A planetary magnetic field is critical for protecting the surface environment from solar and cosmic radiation. It’s also critical for making sure the planet can retain a significant atmosphere. Without a strong magnetic field, the solar wind comes into direct contact with the outer atmosphere, and will tend to strip away the air over fairly short time-scales. This effect turns out to be quite a bit stronger than simple thermal loss, so if you want a habitable planet, you really need to make sure compasses work there.

Toswao is nice and big and dense, so it will certainly have a liquid nickel-iron core whose rotation can create a dynamo. But that leads us to a second question that most world-design sequences probably get wrong: how quickly does Toswao rotate, and where is its rotational axis?

The world-design sequences I’ve seen (and the ones I’ve written in the past) generally assume that terrestrial planets all rotate at similar rates, their rotational axes well-behaved, modified (if at all) only by tidal effects over long periods. Yet even in our own planetary system we can see that this isn’t the case, especially when we look at Venus. Recent models for the formation of terrestrial planets suggest that the process is much more catastrophic than we once assumed. Every terrestrial planet, even Earth, has been shaped by enormous impacts and collisions, so that its final rotation axis and rate are more random than we might expect.

Then, of course, the tidal interactions between a terrestrial planet and its primary star (and any major natural satellite) turn out to be much more challenging to model than we might like. This isn’t because the physics of the situation are poorly understood – they’re not – but because the system is very sensitive to small details. If Earth was a perfect, elastic, and uniform sphere, it would be easy to determine exactly how solar and lunar tides would affect its rotation over eons. Unfortunately, terrestrial planets are quite a bit more complex and varied than that.

In the light of that, I have yet to produce a game-ready model for planetary rotation that I’m happy with. For now, let’s assume that Toswao’s rotation is similar to that of Earth (especially since the planet does have a major natural satellite like our Moon). Toswao is younger than Earth, so I’ll assume that its rotation rate is a bit faster, and that its satellite is a little closer in than the Moon. Without laying out all of my selections and computations in full, here’s some results:

Toswao

• Mass: 1.18 Earth-masses
• Density: 1.044 Earth (5.72 g/cc)
• Radius: 6635 kilometers (1.04 Earth)
• Surface Gravity: 1.09 G
• Orbital Radius: 0.99 AU
• Orbital Eccentricity: 0.08
• Periastron: 0.91 AU
• Apastron: 1.07 AU
• Angular Diameter of Primary Star: 0.55 – 0.64 degrees
• Orbital Period: 0.9660 standard years (352.84 standard days)
• Rotation Period: 22.608 standard hours (0.9420 standard days)
• Day Length: 22.669 standard hours (0.9445 standard days)
• Apparent Year Length: 373.56 local days
• Axial Inclination: 24°

Given these values for Toswao’s rotation, we can be confident that it has a nice, strong magnetosphere to protect the air and surface. We can proceed on the assumption that Toswao has a more or less Earth-like atmosphere.

We already know some things about that atmosphere, from the final state of the Bios: Megafauna game, and from our computations when we were determining the planet’s placement in orbit around Karjann. A quick random dice roll gives us an “atmospheric mass” for Toswao of about 1.2, noticeably greater than that of Earth. Along with the known details of composition that I generated earlier, that gives us:

• Atmospheric Mass: 1.2
• Surface Atmospheric Pressure: 1.3 atmospheres
• Atmospheric Composition: Nitrogen 64%, oxygen 34%, argon 1.6%, carbon dioxide 0.2%, other components 0.2%. Nitrogen partial pressure about 0.83 atm. Oxygen partial pressure about 0.44 atm. Carbon dioxide partial pressure about 0.003 atm.
• Hydrographics: 88% ocean coverage
• Planetary Albedo: 0.5
• Greenhouse Effect: 44 K
• Average Surface Temperature: 292 K (19° C, or 66° F)

That atmosphere looks breathable for unmodified and unprotected humans, but just barely. The partial pressure of oxygen is approaching high enough to be toxic over long exposures, and there’s a lot of CO2 in the air too. We would probably find Toswao’s air rather invigorating in the short term, but causing some damage to our eyes and lungs in the long term. In the meantime, we might find our cognitive function a bit muddled by CO2-triggered changes in blood flow to our brains. Might want to wear a light breather mask just to keep our blood chemistry happy, if we’re going to be spending much time here.

One more set of details. We know from the Bios: Genesis game that Toswao had a “big whack” event like Earth’s, giving rise to a big, Luna-like natural satellite. I double-checked Toswao’s “Hill radius,” the distance at which Karjann’s gravitational influence overwhelms Toswao’s, and found that there’s plenty of room for the planet to retain a moon.

A random roll sets the satellite’s mass, from which I can quickly determine its density, radius, and surface gravity. I made the non-random decision to place this satellite a little closer to Toswao than Luna is to Earth, about 50 Toswao-radii rather than Luna’s distance of 60 Earth-radii. Here are the numbers:

Toswao’s Moon

• Hill Radius: 2.06 million kilometers
• Orbital Radius: 320,000 kilometers
• Orbital Eccentricity: Negligible
• Mass: 0.0165 Earth-masses
• Density: 0.64 Earth (3.53 g/cc)
• Radius: 1880 kilometers
• Surface Gravity: 0.189 G
• Orbital Period: 19.180 standard days
• Apparent Lunar Cycle: 23.776 standard hours (0.9907 standard days)
• Synodic Month: 20.283 standard days
• Angular Diameter: 0.69 degrees (from planetary surface)

So there we go. There are a few more physical parameters we could probably generate, but this should give us enough to work with for now.

Toswao is an ocean planet, a little warmer than Earth, with lots of clouds. Visiting humans would find the local gravity heavy, but manageable even over long periods. The planet’s atmosphere is breathable for humans in the short term, although we might find it difficult under long exposures. I haven’t explicitly computed the strength of local tides, but both the primary star and the moon are more massive and closer than their counterparts on Earth, so I would expect stronger tides.

Toswao has Earth-like axial tilt and so exhibits similar seasons, although the situation is complicated by a larger orbital eccentricity. Depending on how the orbital parameters line up with the axial inclination, that might tend to either damp out or to accentuate seasonal variation.

I don’t intend to draw a world map, unless the story emerging in my head turns out to be a lot more extensive than I expect. Still, we can say a few things, based on the end state of the Bios: Megafauna game. I would expect the planet’s small continents to be heavily forested, at least in their natural state. Lots of green in the shallow seas, too, to contribute to that high oxygen concentration. I wouldn’t expect to see a lot of deserts or wastelands.

A useful exercise, not only because it gave me a world to use in my creative work, but also because it gave me a motivating example, bringing out details that I’ll need to address in upcoming sections of Architect of Worlds. In the next couple of posts, I’ll be working out a character template for the dominant sentient species native to this world, and writing up some of their back story.