How long is a day, exactly? I mean, we have three suns, those should lengthen the day a lot. That depends of course on how bright they are. If they're small and are only as bright as the real sun when put together, that shouldn't mess with time too much. Then there's the distance between the suns, coz the day would last from when the first sun rises to when the last one sets. In a movie I watched, the inhabitants didn't have night at all because of their three suns.

And what do people use to measure time? A clock? A sundial? Or do they tell by the sun's positions in the sky(which would be cool, only we'd need a short explanation on how that works)?

...Well, that was nitpicky of me. I usually don't bother with details, but seeing as other people are so detailed...*shrugs*

wow....I have a new favorite person.....thats an awesome question...My guess would be, that the suns are staggered in distance, so the closest one is the primary, whereas the other two are used for day but not for time?

Or conversly, if they directly correspond to ones god of choice, then whichever sun is your favorite od is what you use, and we all get confused...

Then use sa GMT global time dial...

So people would be saying, "8 in Celvoran standard time" Well that's for daytime, and use one of the names of the godesses for the moons during the night time :D

^- crappy idea I know.

I have another suggestion, I read a book with the world having 5 suns, these suns don't have a linear travelling position, but instead they have a "scattered" and "cone shape" (Imagine them to be almost exactly in your field of vision whenever you look straight up - 12 o'clock.)

^-again, another crappy suggestion :Þ

You see, this is why I believe we should have figurative 3 suns rather than literal 3 suns :)

I think I may have calculated/mind experimented out a scenario that may work, and I would like to say, it would have been one heck of a lot easier if you all had just gone with FOUR suns, but whatever. That may have been my own fault for choosing the layout and conditions I did, but I did the best I could with my rather rusty, and not horribly strong in the first place, knowledge of Physics, gravity, and Kepler’s laws.
__________________________________________________________________
This explanation assumes a few things: Perfect conditions from a Physics standpoint, Olencia is roughly the same size as Earth, the Suns are all roughly the same size as Earth’s sun, and gravity works approximately the same way it does in our solar system. It also assumes there are some pretty large interstellar bodies, probably some gas giants, located behind Olencia, but I doubt there would be much in the way of planets located in front of Olencia, because that would attract Olencia closer to the suns than I am assuming it is (three stars have a LOT of gravitational pull, and I’m probably already taking more than a few liberties with regards to position away from the sun, regardless of how many supermassive gas giants are located behind Olencia to exert gravitational pull away from the suns. However, if Olencia were much closer to its suns than Earth is, most astronomists would probably say life could not exist there, so I kept Olencia approximately as far away from its suns as Earth is from ours, regardless of how many Physics laws I’m breaking. Hey, I’m a Biologist, or I will be some day, and I have few qualms about breaking laws of Physics!).

Olencia (or the roughly Earth-sized planet, henceforth also called Olencia, it is located on) has three suns which will be located on a 3-D Cartesian Coordinate Plane. The position (0,0,0) is located in the center of the solar system. Olencia’s three suns are three stars of roughly the same shape and size both in relation to each other and to Earth’s sun. They have roughly .5 unit radiuses (1 unit diameter) and are located equidistant to the center of the solar system. Presumably, in the very distant future when the stars expand, they will become one giant star, but that is in the very distant future, and Olencian physicists may not know enough about starts to predict such behavior. Because they are of equal mass and are of equal distance away, they stay in their current formation. Star 1 will be located at position (1, 0, 0), Star 2 will be located in position (0,1,0) and Star 3 will be located at position (0,0,1). Because Olencia is relatively far away, it orbits the cluster in a roughly circular shape, though the circle is somewhat, er, rough in spots. The radius of the orbit is approximately 10 units from the origin.

Due to Olencia’s distance away from the suns, at certain parts of the year, it looks like the suns combine to form one or two interstellar bodies. Arbitrarily, I will say that on the Vernal Equinox, it looks, from Olencia, that the stars are one body (I suppose one could write a bit of folklore about the Spring being Spring because the suns emerge from hibernation…or they collapse in the autumn and winter into one body to signify their “death”, and come back to life in the Spring…I don’t know, you tell me!). I suppose this would mean Olencia is located on or near the Z-axis, but it is terribly hard for me to visualize 3-D coordinates on 2-D space (multivariable calculus will doubtless totally kick my butt), and I’m not too sure. From the Olencian frame of reference, the stars combine into one giant irregularly shaped sun. The suns are totally separate by the Summer Solstice, and start to move closer together on the Autumn Equinox. By Winter Solstice, Star 1 and Star 2 have combined into one shape, and they move closer to Star 3 for the Vernal Equinox.

Keep in mind the last paragraph was written from an Olencian’s frame of reference. The stars don’t actually move, Olencia does, but Olencians may or may not know that. Because everyone has been complaining about the three hot suns, I suppose it is summer in Olencia.

Also keep in mind that just because the suns LOOK like one interstellar body doesn’t mean the energy radiated by the suns disappears. Olencia still wobbles and tilts on its axis rather like the Earth does to create seasons…but because there are three Suns emitting energy, it is presumably a LOT warmer during the Summer and Winter. I would guess that the continent we’re playing on may be close to one of the poles (or one of the poles themselves) and the rest of the world would be too hot to inhabit or travel across, preventing too many invasions from off-continent. Maybe the Elves were chased out of the isle by ice beasts because the beasts were being driven from wherever they came due to climate change…And presumably there wouldn’t be much icy climate to go around, regardless. It would be MOST feasible to me if we flipped the map of Olencia so the Forgotten Isle is in the North and very close to the North Pole and the Dragonlands are in the South, but whatever. This is a fantasy world, we can make or break whatever rules we want. And maybe Olencia has an atmosphere that, while breathable, doesn’t contain many greenhouse gases. I don’t know.

But so far I’ve been nitpicking climate, not time. I would like to propose that on the Equinoxes, the suns stay up for twelve hours each. On the Autumn one, the earliest sun rises at 4:00 AM, the next sun at 8:00, the third at noon. I’m not sure how realistic that is, because it goes WAY beyond what I know about astronomy specifically and also deals with a bit more than I know about the behavior of light, but it doesn’t seem horribly unfeasible to me because Olencia would be different, but not necessarily equal, distances from the suns at any given time. Hence, the last sun would set at midnight, leaving four hours of darkness or near-darkness before the first sun rose. On the Summer Solstice, the suns stay up for 16 hours each, meaning there would be no true darkness (doubtless leading to some wild parties). On the Winter Solstice, the suns stay up for eight hours each, meaning the final sun would set at around 8:00 PM (probably leading to some wild parties also, because who doesn’t like to party?). The first and second suns would look like one interstellar body, so they would rise and set with the first sun's time. On the Vernal Equinox, the suns (which appear to be one body) rise and set about about 6 AM and PM.

To keep things simple, let’s say Olencia rotates once around its axis every 24 hours, and for the same reason Earth’s astronomers did (whatever the heck that was), they decided to portion the day into 24 hours much like our own clock. At noon on the Summer Solstice, the second sun would be in the center of the sky, and the first and third suns would cast symmetrical but opposite shadows on a sundial. By using a process similar to triangulating the shadows, one can determine the exact time, but since most people don’t have the time or knowledge to do that, normal people use clocks. However, early training for astronomists and mathematicians usually includes calculating the time by hand using a sundial, a ruler, and a protractor. And, of course, the awesome powers of their mind.
__________________________________________________________________
So that is my proposed explanation. Take it or leave it, change it at your will. Like I said, I’m no physicist, and it could probably use a bit of correcting if you know more than I.

ETA: I keep coming back to this and tweaking it because the more I think about it, the more things I find wrong (it doesn't help that while my intellectual curiosity and general compulsiveness have returned after my flight from Japan, my normal sleep schedule definitely hasn't...I keep waking up and falling asleep every few hours). I have half a mind to e-mail an old Physics teacher of mine because I'm so terribly frustrated at myself for forgetting as much as I have, but he doesn't have much of a background in astronomy, so e-mailing him probably wouldn't do much good, but GAAAHHH! FRUSTRATION!!! ANGST!!11!!1

Know that I have concluded one thing for certain: To my knowledge, it is highly, highly unlikely a life-sustaining planet would have three suns. But this is a fantasy world, and I'm willing to suspend my disbelief.

Rhys, I am in awe. 0_0

^- Is in awe because Elwin is too lazy to do something like that

WAW... now that's something.

Elwin (and anyone really), if you have half as much knowledge of physics as I do and can come up with a halfway plausible explanation or any suggestions, please, please, please feel free to post them. I'm a Biologist and a Japanese-studier (well, those are my majors...minors...I haven't decided if I'm going to double-major or not), I REALLY don't have much more than a college freshman's knowledge of Physics, and I know next to nothing about astronomy. Add in the fact that I took the equivalent of freshman Physics in High School, and you have a shaky explanation at best. I'm just a curious nitpicker intrigued by the puzzle of three suns; I'm not claiming to actually KNOW anything.

In the words of this emoticon:
:ws:
(Except you need to replace "with" with "am")

(I've always wanted to use that emoticon. Sorry, I couldn't resist. It must be time for me to go back to sleep, I'm getting a little loopy...)

Ok OK, I'll contribute what I can.

Adding to what Rhys just made, I'll make some changes to the overall summary.

The the three suns would be situated in an eternally state of balance in the center of the galaxy (to where Olencia is).

So these three suns are situated like a triangle in the middle (to form the function of a BIG sun) for us.

Taking in the heat radiated by these three suns would be greater with the bigger radius (assuming that the three suns are the same age as out present sun) than our own sun. We would place the earth somewhere around Jupiter's orbit to maintain a state of balance in heat.

lemme do an ascii then:

_____\_____(sun one)_______________(sun three)_______/
_____|
______\______________________________________________|
______|______________________________________________/
_______\___________________________________________|
________\_______________(sun two)
_________|____________________________________ /
__________\__________________________________|
____________`\_______________________________/
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\//////////|<------Imagine the three suns would be in stasis and would emulate a much bigger sun (the line creates a field to perform it's boundery that you are enetering the "fourth sun"

(first boundery of 171+ million km from the triangulated suns
----------------------------------------- <-something that would hold mercury's position for reference)

(second boundery of 213+ million km from sun
--------------------------------------- <-someting that would hold Venus' location for reference


(third boundery of 345+ mil km from sun)
-------------------------------------------------- <-something to hold earth's location for reference







(fourth boundery of 2.218+ billion km from sun
---------------------- <-something that would imitate mars' location for reference


************(first asteroid)
****************(second asteroid)
--------------------------------------------Earth(Olencia) - in Jupiter's location. Approximately around 2.873+ billion km from sun. Using this principle together with the principles of radiance of heat (compounded with the three suns). life would be approximately possible (I think - or at least in my calculations) in this distance.
**********(third asteroid)

NOTE: I used asteroid instead of moon to avoid having these "moons" to cause any disturbances with earth's tides.

If the moons will be just satelites(asteroids) moving with their own orbit but also criss-crossing with Olencia's (to make it spiral and immitate the motion of moon apearing only during the night).


LEGEND:

(sun) - sun
(series of udnerline spaces) - imagine them as empty spaces (used to situate the three sun's position triangularly in a field or else they'll be automatically put on the left most part by default)
\\\\\\\\\\\\///////// <- Boundery line that would make the boundery point for the formed "fourth sun"
---- <- planet
**** <- asteroid/satelite/moon/whatever


^- Crappy ASCII, I know. I hope this will finally solve Olencia's Three sun dillema and fianlly we could RP in peace :D.

OW and maybe I can grill the dancing cow :D

I think the problem with this is that we're assuming the suns stay fixed. In reality, this wouldn't happen; they'd all be gravitationally attracted to each other, so there might be some eleborate scheme in which they all rotate around each other, thus completely throwing our physics into DOOM :look

A handy dandy astronomy site I know of has a three-body 3D gravity... thing... so this might help: http://janus.astro.umd.edu/orbits/3bdy/B3D.html

There's also a fancy 2D gravity thing here: http://www.arachnoid.com/gravitation/ (not the most realistic, but fun :))

Well there are also certain laws of gravitational forces (in heavenly bodies magnitude like stars and black holes) that say when two highly gravitaional forces are formed in certain patterns (shapes rather) there are instances that they will stay fixed and be in a certain stasis. Or else they'll create a space vortex and will eventually turn into a massive black hole like M81 and M82 would eventually happen)

Well suns rotating each other in balance is also a good idea. (which is more understandable than my original suggestion)

Yep, yep, I must agree with Elwin. If the forces the suns exert on each other are equal, they will stay in the same place (assuming the other forces exerted on them are negligable, which in Physics means "for all useful intents and purposes, not there". For example, on ice, friction is often considered negligable, just as gravity is in deep space). I'm pretty sure the forces any planets would exert on them is negligable, because gravitational force exerted by one (or even many planets) <<<<<<<<<< than the gravitational force exerted by two stars (because stars are just that massive).

In the case of three objects the equation to calculate gravitational attraction on any scale (besides Earth) is F=G(m1m2m3)/(r^2) (spoken as "F equals G times m-1 times m-2 times m-3 divided by r-squared"). G is the universal gravitational constant (6.67 x 10^-11 Nm^2/kg^2, to be exact), leaving only four variables: The masses of the objects, and the average radius between them. If the masses of the objects and the radius between them is the same, they'll exert equal forces, and thus stay in the same place. Which is why I said they were roughly the same size, and equidistant from each other (I'm not sure my coordinates set that up. I was drawing/calculating on a 2-D scrap of paper...I usually need either a huge whiteboard to draw on or an acutal 3-D model to visualize such things, so I couldn't
double-check myself very well).

I'm not sure what Elwin means by the "fourth sun". At the distance Olencia is from the suns, they should be differentiable to the casual observer most parts of the year...I think. The most I know about light is the light spectrum, that it has a dual wave/particle nature which leads to all sorts of interesting behavior, and that for all practical purposes, it travels in (mostly) straight lines unless it goes throw mediums of varying density. Remember, I am a Biologist, I know what sunlight does when going through water (for the most part), but I don't know how it would act in space. So feel free to help me out there.

Even then, Physics is what I like to call the science of "Well, that looks about right". All sorts of generalizations are made in it that drive me CRAZY. The truth is, there IS friction on ice, there IS gravity in deep space, and yes, no matter HOW SMALL the forces of planets are on the three suns, it STILL MAY BE ENOUGH TO THROW THE SUNS' EQUILIBRIUM OUT OF WHACK. I HATE generalizations on that scale because I feel they make creating a realistic model impossible, but that is what beginning Physicists need to do to visualize anything.

So no matter what we THINK might work, it might not ACTUALLY work. WE SHALL NEVER BE FREE!!!! OH GNOES!!111!!!!eleven!!!

( :( )

Edited to add: I'm not sure the suns rotating in balance thing is totally realistic, or simple enough for someone with a year of college Physics under her belt to work with. Even the Earth rotating around our Sun (a much, much simpler system) isn't in equilibrium, and adding the three suns rotating would not only make for a REALLY interesting orbital path for Olencia (I'm not even sure if Kepler's Laws would apply, though I'm sure we could figure out a way to make them work), but it would make the whole system THIS much more easily thrown out of whack. It would also make it harder to visualise and work with...who needs the extra component of rotational motion when we already have our plates full with everything else?

Then again, I was terrorized by rotational motion during my class, and ended up just giving up and converting rotational units to linear units, which made for some strange Calculus, but generally worked. Generally. Anyway, my point is, I may be biased against adding rotational motion, but it's in the interest of keeping things simple.

Nice guys. Whatever Physics I learned for three years in High School has been overshadowed by my majors in college. :look

The only reason I've bothered to remember much about Physics is I'll have to take additional classes at some point in the not-so-distant future. And, of course, because I'm all-seeing and knew before the Overlords did that Olencia would have three suns. (B

Plus, it does come in handy, sometimes. And it's interesting. Not totally fascinating (like Biology or Japanese, IMHO), but it's nice to know that you could calculate the speed of a penny dropped off the top of the Empire State Building, take into account rotational motion, air resistence, and any other important variables (wind, maybe), and see if it has enough energy to kill the poor guy it hits on the head. Of course, true physicists are worrying about the penny's molecular structure or whatever. I just care if someone gets hurt. If no one gets hurt, that penny can go as fast as it wants and break all the laws it wants, in my opinion. A real physicist would find the process of the penny falling to be pretty cool, especially if it could have broken a law or two. That's why I kept nitpicking about climate in the above posts, because I'm not a real physicst. A real physicist would worry about eqilibrium, and the black hole at the center of the galaxy, and worm holes, and other dimensions, which I couldn't care less about. From my perspective, they're MUCH more interesting in Sci Fi novels.

Yeah, sorry, I'm rambling. I have a love-hate relationship with Physics. It's a great science and I wouldn't want to live in a world without it but, uh...Yeah. Lots of love, but lots of loathing.

Like I said, the craziness and improbability of this makes me want to have a real sun and two metaphorical suns... I mean, the Greeks thought that Sirius caused the dog days of summer and all :look

That being said:

Though planets don't exert much of an influence when compared to stars, that doesn't mean planets don't do anything to stars. For instance, several extrasolar planets have been detected due to the stars they orbit around 'wobbling' slightly due to the planets. For the three suns to be stable in one place, they must remain completely still; however, any movement caused by Olencia/other planets could set off a chain of events that eventually completely destabilize the system. It's rather improbable that the Olencian solar system is new enough so that the stars have not 'wobbled' yet out of alignment, considering that Olencia has been around long enough to develop intelligent life.

Oh, and anthropology/psychology/politics/linguistics/social studies pwn physics and biology any day (B (Plus, español>>>>>>nihongo)

I'm also amused that you can deal just fine with the uber-totally-infintessimally-tiny scale of biology these days (I had a rather strange moment in my biology class last year when I realized I was thinking about Na/K channels using my Na/K channels :S), but claim to be exasperated by 3D physics ;) (note that I have problems with both, I absolutely abhor drawing 3D in 2D as well :P)

:ph43r: I can't believe my small question got all these answers.

I don't think I can understand all that, but I pretty much have an idea. We don't really have to follow the laws of Physics accurately; I mean, this is fantasy. Sure, it should make sense, but we can make up things along the way.

This makes perfect sense to me, Rhys, and it should be enough to answer my question. About it being official, I'll leave to the Overlords.

(I guess that also means I can steal fancy clocks now, or my character can make approximations on time by glancing at the suns.)

Yes... seems like we really did use the same equation :D

What I meant by "fourth sun" is when the three suns are in that state... they form a "pseudo-sun" (A much bigger sun) that is composed of three suns in quilibrium.

From my scale, I also took into account the part where planets can have a major affect on the stasis in the three suns, that's why I applied both the principles of radiancy and an additional equation (forgot what it's called) that would make an orbiting planet possible around a high gravitational heavenly body.

Observe that I have made them alsmot way too far (much farther than our own galaxy) to the extent that gravitational equilibrium is maintained. And due to the distance, planets would have litle effect on the gravitational field of the three suns... so I guess that this should work, I hope.

Well anyway, I'm no physicist to actually prove my accounts are correct. But from my scale our galaxy would have the shape of an eliptical galaxy (since the magnitude of the core star is so great that it would cause such size)

Oh my god no way, it's like you guys are speaking another language.

A Visual Artist like me cannot cope with the Sciences.

>,>

But still I'm in awe with what Rhys just explained. Could still relate to that.

Elwin, I now totally see what you meant, appreciate the modifications you made to assure equilibrium (that would probably also solve any climate problems I was worried about, I was so stuck on modeling the system after the Earth/Sun system I didn't think of the obvious answer to just MAKE OLENCIA FURTHER OUT, which you most wisely did...Wow, I'm forgetful and need to go back to school right now), and love your diagram. Thank you, you are a gentleman and a scholar! What exactly do you know about radiance? What was your other equation, and what did it solve for? Do tell, do tell, I'm really curious!

TSUKO! RETURN TO THE LIGHT SIDE....UM, LIFE SCIENCES!!! WE, UH, HAVE BETTER FOOD! (Or something...) I must admit a growing infatuation with lingustics, though. It's a nifty little field, and it got me out of studying Kanji!

Dude, Nihongo totally kicks Spanish's butt. First off, we don't have the tilde thingy my computer refuses to make, second off, we have none of that masculine/feminine nonsense, third off, we have THREE irregular verbs (and alphabets...but never mind that!) in the entire language, and finally, we have sushi and totally nonsensical pop music with really lame and confusing English! Beat that! :P Besides, where besides Japan can you find a store called "Erotica" that sells sunglasses? And not even sexy sunglasses, at that? I love Japan not only for the temples and statues of Buddha that predate the Magna Carta by half a centry, but for the really comical English.

I'm no Physician, and it all sounds really groovy. But but but. In my lest favourite lesson we did about Cartesian equations and all that jazz - with suns at (1,0,0) (0,1,0) and (0,0,1) the suns would be on the same plane in only 1 instance - that plane being x + y + z = 1. And this has a gradient of 1 (it takes alot of imagination to see this plane...)

What does this have to do with anything? Well. Judging by the positions of the suns, they would only ever merge as 1 irregular looking sun if one was to sit on this line. And if Olencia is waddling along it's horizontal path of orbit around the sun, this will only happen twice. Uh huh. So this fits in with the Autumn and Spring merging stuff. But even then they will be apart - if one was daft enough to look, they would indeed be at the three given points and, as (0,0,0) isn't on the plane x+y+z=1 people would still see 3 suns.

Okay, that was a crap explanation and it's also majorly picky. It assumes the suns are on these three points and i'm not even good at that branch of maths. In fact, i'm more of a Lit person. Um. Ok. Just thought i'd get involved really ^.^

I'm not even going to bother to defend my supposed coordinate system...I'm not good with 3-D coordinate systems, period. I have to check, model, act out, and double check everything, and I didn't do that in this case. I'm told I have strange vision and percieve depth differently than most people (I don't know how so, it's the only vision I've ever had and the eye doctor wasn't terribly helpful), so I have issues with visualizing stuff the way most people do (which inclues using 3-D coordinate planes), but I see movement really well.

I was orienting the suns mostly for the sake of equilibrium, and to test out the "movement" of the suns I kind of did a mind-experimenty thing where I set up three apples of roughly the same size at about the coordinates I suggested on the kitchen table (I stuck a book under one to get the y-coordinate about right) and walked around them in about the way Olencia would orbit, and they do merge into an irregular-shaped thingy if you're at the point I described, but my set up is not perfect in any way. So you may be right.

Thanks for the input, I think I'll scurry down to the kitchen tomorrow and test it out again with avacadoes or something to see if the results change! (B

Use Max Planck's empirical formulation for spectral radiancy:


Use the sun's irradiancy of 1400 Å–1875 Å, and then since it's three suns, do the average of three (still assuming that the sun in Olencia is the sun in our time)

I forgot what the other equation was called, but what I do know is that it equates how much force in needed for a planet to stay in orbit around a sun (including it's initial inertia, blah blah blah. I had an atronomist help me out on that one, so don't ask me that much, I'm just a med student >_<. I'll ask him sometime and post it here for all your referential needs.

Ummm....people? You are aware that there are no three suns any more? :look Someone else was being nitpicky on that subject, so I vanquished that, and now we have stars, I believe. I honestly can't remember.

But if you like having 4, or 3, or however many, you keep discussing, and I'll fix things when we're done.

And I would love to contribute, except for the fact that I haven't taken physics yet, and would no doubt be lost in this complex discussion you guys are having.

So I shall leave you to it.

I'm pretty sure my whole mind glazed over as soon as I got past Rhy's first post. Holy cow.

You guys are offiicially awesome (not that you weren't before).

I'll comment more on this later, but I have absolutely *no* knowledge of physics, astronomy, etc., so this will probably be left up to your discretion when I finally can add it to the website (which I'm finally working on - yay!).

I finally got what he used in the other equation! It was the Kepler's laws of interplanetary motion!

>_<

My god. You are all l33t! D:

I surrender...

Oh, I know about Kepler now!!!! We learned about his laws in Physics!!


Which means I can almost follow what you've been saying!!! :look