Re: Yes, I'm back

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James Landau wrote:

> (This leads to another question: is there anyone here who knows how to
> find out how fast a planet will rotate on its axis
As fast as it wants to.  :-)  Seriously, Earth is estimated to have
originally had a day of something like 5 or 6 hours, but it's lengthened
over time to 24 hours due to the influence of the Moon.

Well, there is a lower limit, if Earth rotated in a single second, it
would fly apart, but any reasonable period would work.

> or complete a year, given its volume, mass and distance from the sun?)
T = SQRT((4*pi^2*R^3)/(M*G))

Where T is the orbital time in seconds, R is the distance in meters, M
is the mass of the sun (technically total mass of the sun and the
planet, but planetary masses are microscopic relative to solar masses)
in kilograms, and G is the Gravitational Constant, 6.67259*10^-11

> Would the naturalism of choosing a random year length that would make
> Kankonian years completely drift off from their Gregorian equivalents
> after a while be important for convincing fiction?
Well, it's certainly a pretty odd coincidence if it's exactly the same
length as our year.  :-)

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