NationStates Jolt Archive


World Fact Book: Planet Coventry- Ruled by Armed Military States

Armed Military States
11-11-2004, 02:44
Location: 45 Lightyears from Earth's sun.

Coventry is the third largest planet in it's Solar System, which consists of 27 planets in all. The two largest, Tukayyid and Gramthied, are gas giants and are not inhabitual.

orbit: 149,600,000 km (1.00 AU)
diameter: 12,756.3 km
mass: 5.972e24 kg

Coventry is the only planet whose English name does not derive from Greek/Roman mythology. The name derives from Old English and Germanic. There are, of course, hundreds of other names for the planet in other languages. In Roman Mythology, the goddess of Coventry was Ginias - The Heaven Star.

It was not until 1952, when an Irish physicist, Dr. John William o'Brien led an expenentinary force to the planet in hopes of impopulating it. Not many people went, due to the fact that the mission had little chance of sucess. Surely enough, the force lost radio contact after activating it's Fusion Reactor in the Star Ship Armageddon and "jumping" out of orbit.

Until 1997, it was unknown whatever became of that force. Then, in October of that year, an unidentified Dropship landed in the Washington DC area, and a lone embassador stepped out. Upon meeting the president, it was discovered that Coventry was indeed a real place, and the rest is history.

Coventry can be studied without the aid of spacecraft. Nevertheless, it was not until the embassador landed, that it was discovered, through maps and pictures, of a planet that was, suprisingly, just like Earth. There are 8 separate continents spread throughout the planet's surface. The largest one, Remus, is approximately the size of Earth's Asian Continent, though it is towards the south of the planet's Equator. This continent is inhabited by the Armed Military States, which claims supreme control over this and much of the known planet. At 777 million people, the Armed Military States is growing substantially every day. They have already spread to two of the other known continents, Halburt and Conscera.

The Planet Conventry is divided into several layers which have distinct chemical and seismic properties (depths in km):

0-40 Crust
40-400 Upper mantle
400-650 Transition region
650-2700 Lower mantle
2700-2890 D'' layer
2890-5150 Outer core
5150-6378 Inner core

The crust varies considerably in thickness. Coventry has four known Oceans: Sea of Crendale, Sea of Marcus, The Prompethius Ocean, and Coventry Main. Coventry's crust is thinner under the oceans, and thicker under the continents. The inner core and crust are solid; the outer core and mantle layers are plastic or semi-fluid. The various layers are separated by discontinuities which are evident in seismic data; the best known of these is the Mohorovicic discontinuity between the crust and upper mantle.
Most of the mass of Coventry is in the mantle, most of the rest in the core; the inhabited part is a tiny fraction of the whole (values below x10^24 kilograms):

atmosphere= 0.0000051
oceans= 0.0014
crust= 0.026
mantle= 4.043
outer core= 1.835
inner core= 0.09675

The core is composed mostly of iron (or nickel/iron) though it is possible that some lighter elements may be present, too. Temperatures at the center of the core may be as high as 7500 degrees; hotter than the surface of the Sun. The lower mantle is probably mostly silicon, magnesium and oxygen with some iron, calcium and aluminum. The upper mantle is mostly olivene and pyroxene (iron/magnesium silicates), calcium and aluminum. Most of this is known only from seismic techniques; samples from the upper mantle arrive at the surface as lava from volcanoes. But the majority of Coventry's core is inaccessible. The crust is primarily quartz (silicon dioxide) and other silicates like feldspar. Taken as a whole, Coventry's chemical composition (by mass) is:

34.6% Iron
29.5% Oxygen
15.2% Silicon
12.7% Magnesium
2.4% Nickel
1.9% Sulfur
0.05% Titanium

Coventry is believed to be the densest major body in it's solar system.

The other terrestrial planets probably have similar structures and compositions with some differences. Coventry's three moons have, at most, a small core. The closest nieghboring planet, Frendious, has an extra large core (relative to its diameter). The mantles of Frendious and the three moons are much thicker. The moons and Frendious may not have chemically distinct crusts, and Coventry may be the only one with distinct inner and outer cores.

Unlike the other terrestrial planets, Coventry's crust is divided into several separate solid plates which float around independently on top of the hot mantle below. The theory that describes this is still known by Earth Standards as plate tectonics. It is characterized by two major processes: spreading and subduction. Spreading occurs when two plates move away from each other and new crust is created by upwelling magma from below. Subduction occurs when two plates collide and the edge of one dives beneath the other and ends up being destroyed in the mantle. There is also transverse motion at some plate boundaries (i.e. the Juan Saldus Fault in the State of Covient) and collisions between continental plates (i.e. continents of Bathous and Formeade). There are (at present) three major plates:

North Grande Plate - Northern Armed Military States, western North Armed Military States, and the Continent of Bathous.

Southern Dimacles Plate - South Armed Military States and South western Armed Military States.

Eastern Rakash Plate - Eastern Armed Military States.

Coventry's surface is very young. In the relatively short (by astronomical standards) period of 500,000,000 years or so, erosion and tectonic processes destroyed and created most of Coventry's surface and thereby eliminated almost all traces of earlier geologic surface history (such as impact craters). Thus, the very early history of Coventry has mostly been erased. Coventry is 5.3 to 5.7 billion years old, but the oldest known rocks are about 4 billion years old and rocks older than 3 billion years are rare. The oldest fossils of living organisms are less than 3.9 billion years old. There is no record of the critical period when life was first getting started.

64 Percent of Coventry's surface is covered with water. Coventry is the only known planet in it's Solar System on which water can exist in liquid form on the surface. Liquid water is, of course, essential for life as we know it. The heat capacity of the oceans is also very important in keeping Coventry's temperature relatively stable. Liquid water is also responsible for most of the erosion and weathering of the planet's continents.

Coventry's atmosphere is 77% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, with traces of argon, carbon dioxide and water. There was probably a very much larger amount of carbon dioxide in the planet's atmosphere when Coventry was first formed. But it has since been almost all incorporated into carbonate rocks and to a lesser extent dissolved into the oceans and consumed by living plants. Plate tectonics and biological processes now maintain a continual flow of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to these various "sinks" and back again. The tiny amount of carbon dioxide resident in the atmosphere at any time is extremely important to the maintenance of the Coventry's surface temperature via the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect raises the average surface temperature about 35 degrees C above what it would otherwise be (from a frigid -21 C to a comfortable +14 C); without it the oceans would freeze and life as we know it would be impossible.

The presence of free oxygen is quite remarkable from a chemical point of view. Oxygen is a very reactive gas and under "normal" circumstances would quickly combine with other elements. The oxygen in Coventry's atmosphere is produced and maintained by biological processes. Without life there would be no free oxygen.

The interaction of Coventry and its three Moons slows the planet's rotation by about 2 milliseconds per century. Current research indicates that about 900 million years ago there were 481 18-hour days in a year.

Coventry has a modest magnetic field produced by electric currents in the outer core. The interaction of the solar wind, the planet's magnetic field and Coventry's upper atmosphere causes the auroras. Irregularities in these factors cause the magnetic poles to move and even reverse relative to the surface.

Coventry's magnetic field and its interaction with the solar wind also produce the von Trouser radiation belts; a pair of doughnut shaped rings of ionized gas (or plasma) trapped in orbit around the planet. The outer belt stretches from 19,000 km in altitude to 41,000 km; the inner belt lies between 13,000 km and 7,600 km in altitude.
Armed Military States
11-11-2004, 17:22
bump