100 Planet Star System?

So, I'm working on a Sci-Fi series that takes place in a different star system. So, as you've seen above, I want to know if a Star System can hold 100 planets in it? The 100 planets isn't necessary to the story, but I want 100 planets because the name of the system has a pun to the number 100. I'm willing to change that name if it's just impossible or implausible.

A close proximity star cluster could do this in theory. Like a triple star cluster where two stars orbit the third like a planet with numerous planets in between and/or around the other stars.

I don't think there's anything in the laws of physics that prevent such a system in either single or multiple stars, it's just a matter of material, probability and size.

Of course you could simply "cheat" and redefine what a planet is.

Without defining a planet small enough to include a significant portion of our own asteroid belt my first instinct is to say... no. Or at least not for long. Even for very large multiple star systems you've got the problem that the planets will be interacting with each other to a massive degree with local space being that crowded. They're going to wind up ejecting each other out of the system on hyperbolic orbits or flinging them into the local star(s) or each other. Especially if you've got a Jovian class bruiser in the mix.

Yeah, while this isn't explicitly impossible, it's so improbable that finding it is basically the next best thing to impossible.

Any orbital system becomes exponentially more complex with each added component. The more complex it is, the more likely it is to become unstable.

Then again, there are 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone. If it's at all possible, then odds are there is at least one out there somewhere.

You could increase the planet count without having to much orbits (and thus instability) by having binary planets, planetoids at Lagrange points, and so on.

A single solar system (revolving around a single star/"sun") with 100 planets would be impossible if they're all past a certain size - without some advanced form of orbit control.

Same goes for a star system - the whole idea behind one is that the stars in that system are bound by each other's gravity, and that would wreck merry hell on the orbits of any planets that fall between two stars.

None of this gets into how habitable any of those planets might be, either on their own or to offworlders.

It's implausible without some really high-level tech. But since they've already named all the planets and their location in space so well, that implies a certain level and reduces some of the implausibility.

Even if the planets are really far away ? Like Major Tom said, that depends on your definition of planet. Wikipedia says there are over 100 dwarf planets in the Solar System, maybe even 10,000 if objects outside the Kuiper Belt are considered.

Now imagine a scaled-up star system where Ceres and Pluto are as big as Earth, and accordingly further from the star... I know physical system can't just be scaled up and expected to work just the same, but there's got to be a way to make that work. The outer planets just won't be very interesting, or even feel like they're part of the star system.

Unfortunately that means you're going to have a lot of iced over planets like Pluto (pre-redefinition). Kinda boring.

You mean Pluto is no longer iced over after the re-definition ?

Depends on the tech level. Thawing out an iceball isn't that hard compared to other forms of terraforming, so it's not unreasonable for them to count those as part of the hundred worlds.

I don't think Pluto receive nearly enough solar energy to stay unfrozen, even with all the terraforming in the world.

I suppose you could build a Dyson Sphere and redistribute the light to the planets and the planets only with concentrated beams, but that's a Kardashev II...

How hard are you hoping to make the sci-fi?

If it was me, I'd just have all the planets be roughly equal size, and all following the exact same orbit, so you'd have an enormous chain of 100 planets encircling a star.

People on one planet would be able to look east and west, and see the great chain stretching away into infinity, a bit like the view from the inner face of the Ringworld.

...That might even work if the planets are all the exact same mass and placed very regularly along the orbit (not sure how much leeway there would be). Still, it would probably be an unstable equilibrium.

edited 8th Jun '15 4:13:16 PM by Aetol

Going off of my notes and plans for the series...it's safe to say this is a very soft Sci-Fi.

My previous suggestion drove me to create this◊ as a rough mockup of my idea.

I like to imagine each planet is its own unique little world, and small enough that you could walk from one pole to the other in about a month. There'd be ocean worlds, forest worlds, jungle worlds, volcano worlds, and all kinds of others. Plus there'd a bunch of other stuff floating around too, like asteroids and comets and one planet's personal sun.

Needless to say, the night sky in this setting would be really crowded.

edited 18th Jun '15 11:40:59 PM by Tungsten74

Extremely unlikely. They'd crash into each other (gravitational attraction and random chance) and conglomerate into a handful of larger planets. The more collisions, the more mass each planetoid would have, so it would snowball, too. If you must have the pun, can there be 100 of something else in the system? Comets maybe? Ten planets with ten moons each?

100 planets is at least implausible and maybe impossible. There has to be a lot of space between them (the distance between planets in our system is dramatically compressed in every picture you've ever seen, if it was to scale there would be a football field between Mercury and Venus), and I'm having trouble imagining a star big enough to keep an outer orbit that far away.

edited 18th Jun '15 5:29:47 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Quoting Wikipedia :

So yes, 100 something in a single star system is perfectly plausible.

How advanced is the technology of your setting? You could have 100 asteroid colonies.

^^ Hence, "cheating" and redefining what a planet is.

It's meant to be a highly advance setting.

I'm cheating just about everything else, so I might as well.

I was thinking that the gravity around this system is either very sensitive to change-so if, say, a planet was destroyed or eve a small shift in gravity or magnetic fieldss, everyone is doomed. Or it's Magic that keeps it all in place.

edited 20th Jun '15 10:21:04 PM by HydraGem

Doing a bit of necromancy on this thread because a very good illustration of the issues involved here has recently gone up on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEB0PGwavUA

Might help out any future writer/tropers planning to play around with this.