Cryojovian in the Old Solar System | |
Image from Steve Bowers | |
Neptune in a stormy phase |
Neptune- Data Panel | |
Planet | Neptune, 8th planet from Sol, Solsys |
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Diameter | 49,244 km |
Type | Cryojovian |
Semimajor axis | 30.1 AU |
Population | 7 billion sophonts on Neptune and in its moon system (31% nearbaselines, 9% low gravity tweaks, 2% space adapted humans, 9% vecs, 45% sophtwares, 4% other). The majority of Neptune's population is on the large, cryovolcanic moon Triton and in various virch clusters. The Arcadia ring and Eyes of Neptune are considered separate political and demographic entities. |
Government | The Neptune Sufficiency is a member of the Solar Organization. The Sufficiency, 'Nessie' among Anglic-speaking modosophonts, is a transapient-run government that manages resources, infrastructure, and civil and criminal law. The Sufficiency acts as a mediator and sometimes arbitrator for disputed resources (virch, energy, or material) and legal conflicts among citizens who are otherwise left to their own devices, the so-called 'hypervisor method of governance.' Local critics, particularly old refugees from the Disaster of 10107 AT denounce Nessie as 'a typical archailect tyranny' because the ad hoc cyberdemocratic clusters citizens use to negotiate resource use among themselves are legally only advisorial bodies that may be overridden by transapient government agents. In practice, the government (which lacks archailects) rarely intervenes or overrides decisions by citizens and clusters if they do not step outside their resource budgets or step on the rights of neighbors. |
Planetary Development | Neptune is the eighth planet of the Solar System, an ice giant seventeen times as massive as Terra that is colored a vivid azure. First Century AT astronomers used Neptune as a metonym for the Neptune- and Hot Neptune classes of extrasolar ice giants. It was the last of the major bodies in Solsys to be settled, though explorers and colonists reached only a few years (273AT) after settling Uranus. Today, the world is a quiet backwater of Solsys, serving as a gravitational anchor for the Eyes of Neptune and hosting a modest population among its moons and bubblehabs. This quiet state contrasts with Neptune's history. Modern Neptunians divide their history into four eras, starting with the Interplanetary era. Neptune's independent history is divided into the Early, Middle, and Modern eras, which are each defined by conflicts and social turmoil (about which the majority of Solsys is ill-informed). The Early Era of Neptune roughly lasts until the early 6th millennium when a fraction of Neptune's population was involved in the embarrassing anthropoist attacks on Earth, followed by the isolationist Middle Era that ended in the 10th Millennium with one of the greatest recent disasters in Solsys history, then the relatively recent and quiet Modern era. |
Moons and Rings | About a third of Neptune's population is resident on the large, retrograde moon Triton as either low gravity tweaks or uploads, where they live in modest computronium clusters and pressurized habitats. Triton has relatively large computronium clusters favored by the Neptune Necessity's transapient managerial staff, the waste heat of which is used to produce numerous liquid nitrogen lakes, geysers, and thicken Triton's miniscule atmosphere for the enjoyment of modosophont sportsbeings. The other moons of Neptune are lightly inhabited and often marked with mothballed von Neumann ice mining facilities. Of these, only Proteus has a substantial population of about 20 million space-adapted modosophonts and vecs involved in extracting heavily elements from Proteus's anomalously metal-rich core. |
Image from Steve Bowers |
Image from Steve Bowers | |
The Nitrogen lakes on Triton caused by technogenic warming |
Image from Steve Bowers | |
Arcadia Bishop Ring |