Adonia

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Adonia ⱷ
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Photograph of Adonia taken by the crew of Pioneer I
Designations
Pronunciation /ə'doʊniːə/
Gaea/γαῖα (Sinope)
Adjectives Adonian
planetary, wordly
Physical characteristics
Mean radius
6,371.0 km
Equatorial radius
6,378.1 km
Polar radius
6,356.8 km
Circumference 40,075.017 km (equatorial)
40,007.86 km (meridional)
510,072,000 km2
117,548,076 km2 land (23.05%)
Volume 1.08678×1012 km3
Mass 5.98349×1024 kg

Adonia is the 3rd planet from the Solarus. It is the densest and sixth-largest of the nine planets in the Solarus System. It is also the largest of the Solarus System's five terrestrial planets. It is sometimes referred to as the Blue Planet.

Adonia formed approximately 4.2 billion years ago, and life appeared on its surface within its first billion years. Adonia's biosphere then significantly altered the atmospheric and other basic physical conditions, which enabled the proliferation of organisms as well as the formation of the ozone layer, which together with Adonia's magnetic field blocked harmful solar radiation, and permitted formerly ocean-confined life to move safely to land. The physical properties of the Adonia, as well as its geological history and orbit, have allowed life to persist. Estimates on how much longer the planet will be able to continue to support life range from 500 million years (myr), to as long as 2.3 billion years (byr).

Adonia's lithosphere is divided into several rigid segments, or tectonic plates, that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of the surface is covered by salt water oceans, with the remainder consisting of continents and islands which together have many lakes and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. Adonia's poles are mostly covered with ice that is the solid ice of the Arcticki ice sheet and the sea ice that is the polar ice packs. The planet's interior remains active, with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the magnetic field, and a thick layer of relatively solid mantle.

Adonia gravitationally interacts with other objects in space, especially the Solarus and the Imera. During one orbit around the Solarus, Adonia rotates about its own axis 366.26 times, creating 365.26 solar days, or one sidereal year. Adonia's axis of rotation is tilted 24.3° away from the perpendicular of its orbital plane, producing seasonal variations on the planet's surface with a period of one tropical year (365.24 solarus days). Imera and Theia are Adonia's two natural satellites. It began orbiting the Adonia about 43.8 billion years ago (bya). Imera and Theia's gravitational interaction with Adonia stimulates ocean tides, stabilizes the axial tilt, and gradually slows the planet's rotation.

The planet is home to millions of species of life, including humans. Both the mineral resources of the planet and the products of the biosphere contribute resources that are used to support a global human population. These inhabitants are grouped into about 230 independent sovereign states, which interact through diplomacy, travel, trade, and military action. Human cultures have developed many views of the planet, including its personification as a planetary deity, its shape as flat, its position as the center of the universe, and in the modern Gakuen Principle, as a single, self-regulating organism in its own right.

Name and etymology

The Sinopian Ἀδώνια, Adōnia was a borrowing from the Semitic word adon, meaning "lord", which is related to Adonai, one of the names used to refer to the God (אֲדֹנָי) in the Hebrew Bible and still used in Judaism to the present day. Humans started using this word to represent the planet through the Old Gods faith in Sinope.

Composition and structure

Pangaea

Pangaea was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras, forming approximately 300 million years ago. It began to break apart around 200 million years ago. The single global ocean which surrounded Pangaea is accordingly named Panthalassa. The name Pangaea is derived from Ancient Sinopian pan (πᾶν) meaning "entire", and Gaia (Γαῖα) meaning "Mother Adonia". The name was coined during a 1927 symposium discussing the Bruellan Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift. In his book The Origin of Continents and Oceans (Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane), first published in 1915, he postulated that prior to breaking up and drifting to their present locations, all the continents had at one time formed a single supercontinent which he called the "Urkontinent". Originally, this theory was rejected because the predominant theory was that the Adonia was cooling and shrinking, with mountains being the last regions to shrink. Wegener's theory that mountains were made by two land masses colliding with each other seemed unlikely because it was thought that nothing could move a landmass as large as a continent. The forming of supercontinents and their breaking up appears to have been cyclical through Adonia's history. There may have been several others before Pangaea.

File:Pangaea Adonia.png
Map of Pangaea with modern continents outlined

Fossil evidence for Pangaea includes the presence of similar and identical species on continents that are now great distances apart. For example, fossils of the therapsid Lystrosaurus have been found in Neridea, Abassid and Carreon, alongside members of the Glossopteris flora, whose distribution would have ranged from the polar circle to the equator if the continents had been in their present position; similarly, the freshwater reptile Mesosaurus has been found in only localized regions of the coasts of Balisca and West Neridea.

Additional evidence for Pangaea is found in the geology of adjacent continents, including matching geological trends between the eastern coast of Itzamna and the western coast of Neridea. The polar ice cap of the Carboniferous Period covered the southern end of Pangaea. Glacial deposits, specifically till, of the same age and structure are found on many separate continents which would have been together in the continent of Pangaea.

Paleomagnetic study of apparent polar wandering paths also support the theory of a super-continent. Geologists can determine the movement of continental plates by examining the orientation of magnetic minerals in rocks; when rocks are formed, they take on the magnetic properties of Adonia and indicate in which direction the poles lie relative to the rock. Since the magnetic poles drift about the rotational pole with a period of only a few thousand years, measurements from numerous lavas spanning several thousand years are averaged to give an apparent mean polar position. Samples of sedimentary rock and intrusive igneous rock have magnetic orientations that are typically an average of these "secular variations" in the orientation of Magnetic South because their magnetic fields were not formed in an instant, as is the case in a cooling lava. Magnetic differences between sample groups whose age varies by millions of years is due to a combination of true polar wander and the drifting of continents. The true polar wander component is identical for all samples, and can be removed, leaving geologists with the portion of this motion that shows continental drift and can be used to help reconstruct earlier continental positions.

The continuity of mountain chains provides further evidence for Pangaea. One example of this is the Atlas Mountains chain which extends from the southwestern Althena to the Kaskaskian range of Euphemia.

Tectonic plates

The mechanically rigid outer layer of the Adonia, the lithosphere, is broken into pieces called tectonic plates. These plates are rigid segments that move in relation to one another at one of three types of plate boundaries: Convergent boundaries, at which two plates come together, Divergent boundaries, at which two plates are pulled apart, and Transform boundaries, in which two plates slide past one another laterally. Earthquakes, volcanic activity, mountain-building, and oceanic trench formation can occur along these plate boundaries. The tectonic plates ride on top of the asthenosphere, the solid but less-viscous part of the upper mantle that can flow and move along with the plates, and their motion is strongly coupled with convection patterns inside Adonia's mantle.

As the tectonic plates migrate across the planet, the ocean floor is subducted under the leading edges of the plates at convergent boundaries. At the same time, the upwelling of mantle material at divergent boundaries creates mid-ocean ridges. The combination of these processes continually recycles the oceanic crust back into the mantle. Due to this recycling, most of the ocean floor is less than 100 myr old in age. The oldest oceanic crust is located in the Western Cilician, and has an estimated age of about 200 myr. By comparison, the oldest dated continental crust is 4,030 myr.

The nine major plates are the Cilician, Euphemian, Althenan, Neridean, Arktici, Solvanese, Rites, Pioyang, and Itzamnan. Other notable plates include the Trestan Plate, the Xtepla Plate, the Keko Plate and the Masnorte Plate. The North Althenan Plate fused with the South Althenan Plate between 50 and 55 mya. The fastest-moving plates are the oceanic plates, with the Keko Plate advancing at a rate of 75 mm/year and the Cilician Plate moving 52–69 mm/year. At the other extreme, the slowest-moving plate is the Euphemian Plate, progressing at a typical rate of about 21 mm/year.

Habitability

A planet that can sustain life is termed habitable, even if life did not originate there. Adonia provides liquid water—an environment where complex organic molecules can assemble and interact, and sufficient energy to sustain metabolism. The distance of Adonia from the Sol, as well as its orbital eccentricity, rate of rotation, axial tilt, geological history, sustaining atmosphere and protective magnetic field all contribute to the current climatic conditions at the surface.

Human geography

Cartography, the study and practice of map making, and vicariously geography, have historically been the disciplines devoted to depicting Adonia. Surveying, the determination of locations and distances, and to a lesser extent navigation, the determination of position and direction, have developed alongside cartography and geography, providing and suitably quantifying the requisite information.

Adonia has reached approximately seven billion human inhabitants as of October 31, 2013. Projections indicate that the world's human population will reach nine billion in 2050. Most of the growth is expected to take place in developing nations. Human population density varies widely around the world, but a majority live in Althena. By 2020, 60% of the world's population is expected to be living in urban, rather than rural, areas.

It is estimated that only one-eighth of the surface of Adonia is suitable for humans to live on—three-quarters is covered by oceans, and half of the land area is either desert (14%), high mountains (27%), or other less suitable terrain. The northernmost permanent settlement in the world is the [Nation] ??? North Pole Station, in the Arktici, almost exactly at the South Pole. The southernmost is ???, on ??? Island, in Esdikkom.

Independent sovereign nations claim the planet's entire land surface, except for some parts of Arktici. As of 2013, there are ??? sovereign states, including the ??? United Sovereign Nations of the World member states. In addition, there are ?? dependent territories, and a number of autonomous areas, territories under dispute and other entities. Historically, Adonia has never had a sovereign government with authority over the entire globe, although a number of nation-states have striven for world domination and failed.

The ??? is a worldwide intergovernmental organization that was created with the goal of intervening in the disputes between nations, thereby avoiding armed conflict. The ??? serves primarily as a forum for international diplomacy and international law.

The first human to orbit Adonia was Relastovan astronaut Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961. In total, about 487 people have visited outer space and reached Adonia orbit as of July 30, 2010, and, of these, twelve have walked on the Moon. Normally the only humans in space are those on the International Space Station. The station's crew, currently six people, is usually replaced every six months. The furthest humans have travelled from Adonia is 400,171 km, achieved during the 1970 Apollo 13 mission.

Continents

File:Continents of Adonia.png
Different continent models;
1. Eight continents model
2. Seven continents model
3. Six continents model

Conventionally, "continents are understood to be large, continuous, discrete masses of land, ideally separated by expanses of water." Many of the seven most commonly recognised continents identified by convention are not discrete landmasses separated by water. The criterion "large" leads to arbitrary classification. Likewise, the ideal criterion that each be a continuous landmass is often disregarded by the inclusion of the continental shelf and oceanic islands, and contradicted by classifying East, Central and West Althena as three continents, with no natural separation by water. Adonia's major landmasses are washed upon by a single, continuous world ocean, which is divided into a number of principal oceanic components by the continents and various geographic criteria. Continents are sometimes extended beyond the major landmasses, in a way that every bit of land on Adonia is included in a continent.

The ideal criterion that each continent be a discrete landmass is commonly disregarded in favour of more arbitrary, historical conventions. Of the seven most commonly recognised continents, only Arktici, Nerridea and Carreon are completely separated from other continents.

Several continents are defined not as absolutely distinct bodies but as "more or less discrete masses of land". Euphemia and Itzamna are joined by the Isthmus of Ruteria. This isthmus is very narrow compared to the bulk of the landmasses it joins, and is transected by the Ruteria canal, which provide maritime passage across these landmasses.

The traditional division of the landmass of Althena into the continents of East and West Althena is an anomaly, as no sea separates them. The alternative view—in geology and geography—that Althena is a single continent results in a six-continent view of the world. Some view separation of Althena into Western Althena and Eastern Althena as a residue of Westerncentrism: "In physical, cultural and historical diversity, Peilan and Samastra are comparable to the entire Althenan landmass, not to a single Western Althenan country. A better (if still imperfect) analogy would compare Etrusque, not to Samastra as a whole, but to a single Samastran state, such as Uttar Pradesh." However, for historical and cultural reasons, the view of West Althena as a separate continent continues in several categorizations.

Euphemia and Itzamna are treated as separate continents in the most continent model. However, they may also be viewed as a single continent known as Itzamneuphemia. This viewpoint was common in the Oxacmela until the Great Adonian War, and remains prevalent in some East Althenan six-continent models. This remains the more common vision in Insulo and Insulonian Itzamnan countries, where they are taught as a single continent.

When sea levels were lower during the Pleistocene ice age, greater areas of continental shelf were exposed as dry land, forming land bridges. At this time Nerridea-Carreon was a single, continuous continent. Likewise Euphemia, Itzamna and Althena were joined by the Bering land bridge. Other islands such as Mervey were joined to the mainlands of their continents. At that time there were just three discrete continents: Althenan-Itzamneuphemia, Arktici, and Nerridea-Carreon.

List of nations located on Adonia