Game of Thrones begins....

[Grey Fox]

That is why Mercury is so ho0t and Neptune so cold.

Mercury is a PARTY?

[Ed Anger]

Or an owl.

[Liep]

That is why Mercury is so ho0t and Neptune so cold.

Mercury is a PARTY?

Friday is a PARTY.

[Razgovory]

He's not pretending to be a scientist, he's pretending to be a lawyer.  Jeez, give the guy some slack.

[Richard Hakluyt]

"Why do retards and Australians always seem to think that LOL WE GET CLOSR 2 TEH SUN IN SUMMR? "

I have corrected your post marti.

[Syt]

Questions to astronomotards: is a highly elliptic orbit around a sun that exacerbates the tilt-induced seasons on a planet?


In Tad Williams' Dragonbone Chair books there appears a comet in the sky, followed by a long, hot summer, lasting well into december, followed by a harsh winter that reaches almost into the tropics. To layman me that made enough cosmological sense ... actually besides the "fade" (to use a Dragon Age term) and a few special skills by the elves Sithi there's precious little supernatural stuff going on in the books.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Btw, I don't remember whether the books say that the "winter is coming" phenomenon occurs globally or is this more of a Westeros-based phenomenon? If the latter, this could be related to some sort of Gulfstrom surrounding Westeros that goes down or up depending on icecaps melting or whatever, and causes these strong winter periods. Europe would pretty much plunge to the climatic levels of Canada if the real-world Gulfstrom was shut down so that's not so unlikely (and since GRRM is a leftie, he probably is familiar with all the "global warming causes global ice age" theories).

I think he mentioned in an interview that it only really affects Westeros. This could be because only Westeros extends north enough (there's a chapter in GoT where Bran, in a coma, dreams of flying far north of the wall and sees the Others and some still unexplained things), or there could be another thing. There's no evidence in the books, that I know of, for the winters or Others affecting the other lands.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Questions to astronomotards: is a highly elliptic orbit around a sun that exacerbates the tilt-induced seasons on a planet?


In Tad Williams' Dragonbone Chair books there appears a comet in the sky, followed by a long, hot summer, lasting well into december, followed by a harsh winter that reaches almost into the tropics. To layman me that made enough cosmological sense ... actually besides the "fade" (to use a Dragon Age term) and a few special skills by the elves Sithi there's precious little supernatural stuff going on in the books.

An elliptical orbit would do that, though I don't think a comet could push a planet into an elliptical orbit. It would be pretty regular, though, which rules it out for Westeros.

[Martinus]

Without magic....some sort of second sun orbiting the first which occasionally draws nearer to the planet giving warmer weather and other times is far away giving default colder weather?

You do realize that temperatures on Earth have preciously little to do with the *distance* from the Sun, right?

Uhhh, wut?

The cycle of seasons on Earth (and accompanying temperature changes) are mainly connected with the Earth's axis/which part of Earth is being shined upon by the Sun - winter doesn't happen because at the time the Earth is far from the Sun, but because at the time, the hemisphere where winter happens is under the "wrong" angle vis-a-vis the Sun.

Ahh, you are talking about the variance in temperature not being about distance from the sun, rather than the temperature itself.

Gotcha.

Yeah. Of course if the orbit is far from the sun to begin with, it's going to affect overall temperature.

[Martinus]

Btw, I don't remember whether the books say that the "winter is coming" phenomenon occurs globally or is this more of a Westeros-based phenomenon? If the latter, this could be related to some sort of Gulfstrom surrounding Westeros that goes down or up depending on icecaps melting or whatever, and causes these strong winter periods. Europe would pretty much plunge to the climatic levels of Canada if the real-world Gulfstrom was shut down so that's not so unlikely (and since GRRM is a leftie, he probably is familiar with all the "global warming causes global ice age" theories).

I think he mentioned in an interview that it only really affects Westeros. This could be because only Westeros extends north enough (there's a chapter in GoT where Bran, in a coma, dreams of flying far north of the wall and sees the Others and some still unexplained things), or there could be another thing. There's no evidence in the books, that I know of, for the winters or Others affecting the other lands.

That's what I thought - so the argument about "distance from the sun" would make no sense. If you discount the "OMG ITS TEH MAGICK" argument that Martin seems to put forth (probably because he is lazy ), some sort of "ocean conveyer" theory probably makes most sense.

[The Brain]

Of course temperatures have to do with distance fromthe sun.  That is why Mercury is so ho0t and Neptune so cold. 

And why Mercury is so hot and Venus even hotter. Hey, wait a minute....!

[Berkut]

Lazy? Christ, the dude is an author. If he wants his world to have weird seasons and weather, then it isn't "lazy" to just say it is so and call it magic in a fantasy setting.

Shit, don't give the dude MORE work to do outside of telling his story! The last thing we need is a couple hundred fucking pages explaining how all THAT works!

[jimmy olsen]

It wouldn't have taken any work to write the story without a moon.

[The Brain]

Lazy? Christ, the dude is an author. If he wants his world to have weird seasons and weather, then it isn't "lazy" to just say it is so and call it magic in a fantasy setting.

Shit, don't give the dude MORE work to do outside of telling his story! The last thing we need is a couple hundred fucking pages explaining how all THAT works!

"Magic did it"? Let me guess: there's magics all the way down.

[Martinus]

Lazy? Christ, the dude is an author. If he wants his world to have weird seasons and weather, then it isn't "lazy" to just say it is so and call it magic in a fantasy setting.

Shit, don't give the dude MORE work to do outside of telling his story! The last thing we need is a couple hundred fucking pages explaining how all THAT works!

No, you misunderstand me - that's what I meant, really, and I agree with you. What I wanted to imply that GRRM probably thought that if he comes up with anything remotely resembling a scientific explanation, there will be always some smartass out there proving immediately how this is wrong and it couldn't work like this. So he came up with "It's magic" explanation to prevent that.

That does mean us nerds can't try to find a scientific explanation for that.