Unrealistic Biome after Planetoid impact ...

Just thought I would throw this out there and hear everyone's thoughts. Since Moons and asteroids are KEWs, I did a rough kinetic energy calculation based on how much the heat the earth would suddenly have if our moon slammed into us at 50,000 mph (not an unrealistic speed for stellar impacts).

On the assumption of an average specific heat of earths crust being somewhere around 1 kJ/kg (average rock specific heat) and that the crust is an average of 8km thick, and knowing that rock becomes a liquid at around 1000K, the kinetic energy calculation reveals that enough kinetic heat energy would be added to the earth to increase the temperature of every single cubic meter of the earths crust by hundreds of thousands if not millions of degrees. (I have done the calculation twice and keep getting just over 1.5 million K as the average temp increase result but I could be a little wrong here.) Understanding that the moons we are tossing around with Halleys may have 1/50th of the mass of our moon comparatively and may be moving considerably slower (say 10000 mph even though at that speed they would be much more difficult to get to their intended target), the average temperature increase on the earth's crust would still be in the thousands of degrees. This is beyond enough to melt the entire surface of our world.

Would it maybe be a good idea to consider changing the biome type of a world hit by one of these KEWs to the lava biome after impact in addition to adding the crater effect? For a bit more realism? Is it possible/easy to have the game rerender the planet with a new biome in a game event like this?

I would say that since the KS video shows the world engulfed in flame, it's on their radar. I doubt this is high up the priority list and is probably in the "final polish" category.

it is a science fiction game, it doesn't need to be realistic

The vast majority of that energy would be kinetic motion, not heat, either disappearing along with a wave of debris, dust and ash into orbit, absorbed into the planet's momentum, or become vibrations as the planet buckles and reverberates from the impact. Planets tend to act more like blobs of fluid than solid objects.
So the 'realism' suggested is highly suspect.

That aside, events that change a planet's theme is an interesting idea.

How do break pads work?

Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It would be transformed into heat energy.

The kinetic energy of the moon may also be transformed into earth's kinetic movement, i.e. changing earth's orbit.

Sounds like a question fit for what-if xkcd

Once I thought like this and thought "Hey... When a car brakes all the kinetic energy becomes heat from the friction."
I thought the tires would be really hot but then I realised that probably most of the kinetic energy went into the ground and gave rotational motion to the planet instead.

Now that you mention it, some of that kinetic energy would indeed apply to an orbit change. and of course a bunch of material would lift from the surface too. However all those vibrations and acting like "blobs of fluid" are exactly how kinetic energy becomes heat. Part of the reason our core and mantle has stayed liquid is the tidal pull of the moon which is constantly creating friction in the earth by causing it to slightly distort. The ripples were are talking about here would easily create massive frictional heat.

Also, I did a bit more quick calculations based on relative sizes and impact effects. A direct impact like the one we see as the incoming moon-bomb animation would rip through the crust and mantle so completely that we would immediately have a continent sized supervolcano at the impact site and the pressure change would probably cause every single fault line on the planet to rupture and start erupting .... even without adding any heat to the equation from outside kinetic energy. This much lava and ash would cause the surface of the earth to be changed to a volcanic biome world anyway. More food for thought.

Also, I forgot to do the easiest calculation of all: a diameter comparison. If we assume the Earth in PA terms to be 1200 radius size then our moon would be just under 350 radius ... which in fact is the size of some of the planet bombs we are throwing around. So yeah the surface of the earth would melt from the crazy amount of heat.

Neat idea. Almost wish it could be a pregame option. Either leave the biome or convert it to lava.

It doesn't matter much. I think it should all be cosmetic though. Changing the terrain features where a plateau crushes your orbital factory, is harsh. Keeping the ground the same but streaming with lava lines and dark as ash works though.

This is Beta, just wait.

It's obviously not finished yet, but I'd hope that, yeah, the biome just changes to lava sea for the affected area, which ought to be "the entire planet" for all but the the smallest KEW impacts.

This does not appear to be true. The Moon's contribution to Earth's internal heat is minor compared to other sources, and the Earth is still losing heat.

Even though Io and Europa suffer massive distortions daily due to their elliptical orbits around Jupiter, enough to give them some amount of internal warmth, their surface temperatures are still far below freezing.

In the present yes.
But for the first couple billion years of the Earth's history, the moon was a lot closer to the earth and our days were a lot shorter. The gravitational shear caused a lot of flex in the earth which is a big part of why our mantle has stayed liquid and we have the active type of tectonic plates that we do. After a good long while as the moon pulled further away our days slowed and its gravity became weak enough to really only affect the ocean tides. I understand your point about Europa but Io has very active volcanoes, lakes of lava, and a molten core. This is caused by the shear stresses you mentioned. Below taken from space.com:
"The volcanic activity is a result of Io being stretched and squeezed as it orbits Jupiter. Io's rock surface bulges up and down by as much as 100 meters during the process."

Both of these moons also receive about 4% of the sunlight that we get on earth which (combined with having minimal atmosphere to hold in heat) is why certain parts of the surface temperature stay so cold. Mars on the other hand is much closer to the sun and nearly 10x more massive than Io, already has a dormant mantle and volcanic activity ceased 500 million years ago. Its two moons are tiny (The larger is 11km across) and provide almost no tidal forces.

Back to topic, I guess I am just looking for a bit more of this:

Technically yes... But it only actually affects Earth's orbit if it has a large "horizontal" component (i.e. along Earth's orbital path, as opposed to "vertical" - towards the Sun)

Also remember that the Earth moon system is what orbits the sun. You haven't made any increase in mass to that system, so it would still rotate at the same distance unless the Earth is slowed down or sped up.

The moon has 1% of the mass of the Earth and is half as dense. I think it's as dense as the Earth's crust. So I think it would kind of be absorbed into the crust.

What? No... Most of the kinetic energy goes into heating the brake pads. That's why they are ceramic, not metal.
Some of that heat heats the surrounding air. A tiny amount of heat is lost to the ground.

The kinetic is totally transformed into heat and sound. Because there is less force being applied by the car on the road, the friction of the road vs the tires cause the car to decelerate.

The brake pads slow down the wheels giving you drive.

And technically the tires are really hot. But rubber is a really good insulator, so the hot bit is probably on the road.

I mean yeah, technically when you jump up, the earth moves down. Technically.

In practice, the Earth isn't one rigid body, so you only create local movement, and the energy which that local deformation contains is soon lost as heat energy.

On a side note, Check this out.

first of screw realism i rather would use authentisity

so you mean biomechange similar to a level change like in a dbz game after a big kiwave/kiball impact?
imaginable but on a rts game like this quite tough and timeconsuming to pull off i would think

Well I'm not convinced. Feel free to provide numbers or a link with explanation.

It also depends on how hard you brake. If you brake so hard you lock the tire, then almost all the heat development will be between the tires and the road. Would most of the energy still turn into heat energy?

Also when you speed up the car, it have a similar effect as braking. In both cases you apply kinetic energy to surface beneath the car so I'd expect the kinetic energy exchange to be in equilibrium before the car accelerates, after the car accelerates and after it brakes. IRL you have the flow of air messing it all up of course.

I'm don't think all spin delivered to surface of the planet would result in heat exchange.
An interesting thought is that all vibrations will turn into heat energy but I don't think the same applies between an accelerating or decelerating car because that applies rotational movement to the planet.

On the subject of vibrations:if you tap a tuning fork in space, would it vibrate forever or would the energy dissipate as heat?

I'll take a shot at the explanation here Godde.

The most efficient braking (with the pads) is a near complete transfer of momentum into heat. This is why brakes get very hot and start smoking when you are using them often as you drive down a mountain. They dont have time to cool down by a the steady transfer of their accumulated heat into the atmosphere.

If you brake by locking the tires, the heat will be generated between the road surface and the tires. Some of the forces will be applied as material deformation: ripping the the rubber outer surface of the tires off. And some will be applied as air compression waves (sound).

As for the rotational momentum transfer to the Earth's spin: Theoretically, if the Earth was infinitely hard (no elasticity) and there was no atmosphere, there would be a complete momentum transfer from the car to the Earth's spin. In real life though this effect is vastly reduced by the fact that the Earth is somewhat flexible, mostly liquid, and has an atmosphere. All of these factors tend to absorb the tiny compression waves caused by a car's momentum change that ripple through the Earth's surface. As the Earth's substance is varied and flexible, the compression waves dissipate with distance. Their energy will mostly end up being converted to heat as the friction between the materials in the earth cause the the atoms to vibrate a just a little more. Thats what heat is. Heat is a heightened energy state which displays as a more excited molecular/atomic vibrations. Energy waves through matter (sound, compression, high energy light waves, etc) all eventually go from an organized state at the source to a chaotic & disorganized state and all the atoms in the matter will share that added & now disorganized energy in the form of a temperature increase. Depending on the size of the object that (like the Earth) that temperature change will be either unobservably small or large for small objects(Brake pads). This constant transfer of more organized energy states into disoranized heat energy is known as entropy and entropy always increases over time.

This is part of the explanation about your tuning fork. No material is truly perfect. Even assuming a pure vacuum, which space is not, over time the vibration of the forks will create micro cracks in the metal of the fork which will distort the standing wave enough that it will disorganize over time and eventally heat the fork slightly as the vibration vanishes. In space, this heat will immediately be lost to the cold vacuum.

You have to remember that materials have a specific heat capacity. Water for one, has a really high capacity. A lot of energy can go into a material before it heats up noticeably.

where do you think the black braking marks come from? that's molten rubber.

Actually no. Unless a car slides, no large amount of energy is transferred to the road. So the friction only acts as something to push against to move the car forward. And yes, at higher speeds the engine is busier counteracting airflow than road friction.

I'm fairly certain that imperfections would lead to eventually losing energy, but it'll go on for a VERY long time.

I see now that the kinetic energy between the planet and the car have to transformed into something like vibrations and heat.
However, when there are 2 objects with different velocity you could say that either one have all the kinetic energy. It depends on your frame of reference. When 2 objects collide without bouncing off eachother, their relative kinetic energy have to be transformed into some other form but they will have a new trajectory and before the collision either one of them could be said to hold all or most of the kinetic energy. Likewise, you could say that either the car or the planet holds the kinetic energy.
Lets say you have a small moon without atmosphere. When you start accelerating the car, you will apply a rotational momentum to the moon, you build up kinetic energy between the moon and the car. When you brake you will take back this momentum from the moon and the kinetic energy between the moon and car will decrease.
Lets say you accelerate to such high speeds that you counteract the force of gravity. Your car will reach escape velocity and become a satellite as it orbits around the planet. If you do this with a big number of cars or a very heavy car it will affect the rotation of the moon notably.

Very true. Just like chucking a hammer away from if you are in freefall will send you in the opposite direction. Conservation of momentum and stuff. If an object leaves a gravity well via a burn however, that conservation of momentum system is between the ejected gas and the vehicle. The moon would neither gain or lose momentum as a result. If you are driving yourself toward escape velocity using wheels, the wheels are applying the momentum change to the vehicle and the world. Assuming a very hard moon surface and a relatively frictionless system, very little energy in your orbital car examples would be transferred into heat.