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Sol is the Latin name for the Sun. In the game of Spore, it is Earth's planetary system that contains the Sun itself (the planetary system's star), the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and the natural satellites, Luna, Ganymede and Titan. Notably, Ceres, Pluto, Eris, and the other dwarf planets are missing from the game. The asteroid belt found in the Sol system was added in a patch, but did not initially exist in the game. However, some objects in our actual Solar System such as the Kuiper Belt are still missing from the game.
The Sol system is an in-game representation of the real solar system in the Milky Way. The coordinates of it are Angle 225.06º, Distance 7,295.43 pc. It was first discovered to be in the game when, during a demonstration at NASA, Will Wright used a console command to warp his spaceship to Earth. The full demonstration can be viewed on YouTube.[1] All planets have a high chance of producing yellow spice, but they can have other colours.
There are two Achievements associated with Earth: Manifest Destiny for simply finding it, and Oh the Humanity! for destroying it with a Planet Buster. Fortunately, players can destroy Earth and quit without saving, and still get it while keeping the Earth and the Moon intact.
Finding the Sol System[]
Sol can be found at coordinates Angle 225.06º, Distance 7,295.43 pc. You can find where you are by hovering over the spaceship icon above the progress bar, which is measured in polar coordinates from the center of the galaxy. This is in the first break of the arm two arms left of the one that breaks early. It is in a patch of space that is blue-colored and shaped like a thumbprint when seen zoomed out at around 50–75%.
When floating over the black hole closest to the galactic core, the Sol system will be along the max range line of the SETI device (if you have Interstellar Drive 5, which increases your range line to its max). The black hole locations are constant across all games, though the names and pairings are not.[2]
Trivia[]
- Steve says he has an almost sold out, wonderful timeshare on the third rock from Sol and to come there for a free breakfast and a presentation. This probably refers to Earth. There is, however, neither, but it could be possible that Steve was referring to Will Wright's NASA presentation.
- Jupiter and Ganymede, strangely, have green orbits. Perhaps this is a reference to 2010: Odyssey Two where Jupiter becomes a brown dwarf, Mars is colonized by humans and Ganymede is terraformed. Another theory about Jupiter's green orbit is possibly also a reference to Europa, a moon of Jupiter that possibly has life, or a reference to Carl Sagan's hypothesis that ammonia-based airship-like lifeforms could evolve in Jupiter's upper atmosphere. In reality, it has been suggested that either Mars or Venus would be the second planet to be terraformed (after Earth).
- Unlike their real counterparts, Mercury and Mars are plain, having only a few recognizable features.
- Olympus Mons and the three Tharsis Montes can be found on Mars along with the Valles Marineris.
- The Moon is a rare crater planet.
- "Sol" means "Sun" in Latin, as well as in a few other languages. In fact, scientists call our solar system "Sol" when treating it as a regular object.
- All the gas giants are the same except for their color and Saturn's rings.
- None of the gas giants in this system can have White Spice, due to programming that forces Sol to be uncolonized.
- There is no Kuiper Belt, which is an area of space beyond the orbit of Neptune, which is similar to the asteroid belt, with the exception of comets in the belt. By extension, there are no Kuiper Belt objects such as the dwarf planet Pluto.
- There is no Oort Cloud, a group of trillions of comets that surround the sun beyond the Kuiper Belt.
- Mercury's spice color differs from game to game. Sometimes it will have Yellow Spice, but it can also have Purple Spice.
- The spice color for Earth also varies. Typically it has Yellow Spice but can occasionally have Purple Spice. Earth can also have green spice or pink spice.
- It is possible (though unlikely) to start in the Sol System as your home system, but the game's glitches make it impossible to do anything when this happens.
- Only Earth, Jupiter and Saturn have a moon in Spore, which are The Moon, Ganymede and Titan respectively. In the case of Ganymede and Titan, they are the largest moons of the planets they orbit. However, the largest moons also need to be spherical to be depicted in the game, which explains why Mars does not have Phobos, its largest but relatively tiny and irregularly shaped moon. It is unknown why Uranus and Neptune do not have Titania and Triton respectively, since they are spherical and the largest of each moon system.
- Since Sol is in the Spore Galaxy, the Spore Galaxy is generally assumed to be the Milky Way Galaxy, despite there being many counter-arguments such as the shape of the galaxy.
External links[]
- http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/264470.html - Finding Earth in Spore (short version)
- http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/263860.html - Finding Earth in Spore (long version)
References[]
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