TOOO wrote:

I took another look at the objects on Relto. If you're very patient, you can see clouds - even the brown ones - barely pass in front of the lower moon. (The upper moon is above the clouds.) This suggests to me that, if the moons can shine even partly through even the brown clouds, then these are not ordinary clouds - on Relto.

Do these same clouds exist on Teledahn? Maybe, but unlikely. (I'll concede that much to Tommyap.) Relto was Written by Yeesha, who has special abilities the D'ni didn't have. Teledahn was (according to Sharper's journal) Written in 8990 for the Guild of Caterers - doesn't say by who.

Also, if you watch closely, you can see the clouds directly behind Teledahn's sun glow briefly as the sun passes by them. That suggests to me that whatever that object is, it's not necessarily a disk, but maybe a sphere (glowing on both sides). Then there's the matter of the glow on the horizon. Add that to all the extra suns on Sharper's map, and that suggests to me that those map suns may be more than just decoration. Is it possible that Teledahn has more than just one artificial sun - one for each section? (An old Doctor Who episode called The Sun Makers comes to mind.)

Questions upon questions....

Lets have a look at the map; uhmm ... i have no idea how to put an image here. uhm.. hope someone else puts it on this thread.

As you can see, the sun-icons are only shown on the outside (margin) of the map. They are not shown on the map itself, only in ... uhm ... Teledahn-incognito. The double curve however is. To me this indicates that whatever the sun-icons
represent is not physicaly present in the terrain. It could however be physicaly present in the sky.
The second thing you may notice is that the sun-tracks like i call them are devided into sections. If you count these sections, filling in the missing part in the middle, you arive at a total of 96 sections per track or there-abouts. This could
be an indication of a time-scale in the D'ni equivalent of seconds. The only thing missing is a little arrow indicating the direction of rotation.
We only ever see one sun on Teledahn. The presence of a whole host of them, somehow remaining unseen, while there is no apparrant need for them seems highly unlikely.

One other thing of note is this:

According to records found, Teledahn was written as a gift to the Guild-of-Caterers. This would indicate there was something there of particular interest to that Guild.
Since we know (or at least asume with some certainty) that mushroom-spores were harvested on Teledahn, and industrialisation took place 10 years after the first D'ni arrived here. We can be fairly certain the mushrooms were present from the very beginning and not imported later. There is good evidence this particular type of mushroom grows extremely slow. The state of D'ni structures show practicaly no growth of the mushrooms in a very long time.
Mushrooms are not plants so they do not need sunlight to grow. But they do need warmth and something (likely organic) to grow on. As far as i know no other source of natural heat has been found on Teledahn apart from its sun so far.
If Teledahn did not have a natural sun, the surface of the planet (or at least the area we are able to visit) would have been a frozen wasteland, without any life-form on it.
It would have been useless to the Guild of Caterers.
What could have been harvested in the 10 years it took to start industrialisation, if with industrialisation is meant the installment of an artifical sun, needed to allow anything to grow there?
Absolutely nothing.
Due to the slow growth of the mushrooms it would have taken an enormous amount of time before any profit could be made,
In which case the investment needed for that artificial sun would have been a total waste of resources.
It is far more likely the industrialisation was intended to increase the yeald and reduce the labour-force increasing the profit.

It is far more likely that Teledahn's sun is natural.
In that case the spores could be harvested by hand from the very first day and profit made.
An enterprise apparantly so profitable that substantial investments were made to mechanize harvesting no more than 10 years later.

tommyap

Then how do you explain the glow on the horizon?

Although I'm not completely wedded to the "rogue planet" theory, I think it still holds up. With a natural sun, there'd be a night cycle when the solar collectors would be useless. With artificial sun(s) constantly in motion (to prevent burning), there's no night cycle, and the solar collectors can run continuously. And remember, all this stuff was Written - not built - into this Age.

Addendum: I should have been a little clearer about Relto's sun. I think that the clouds do pass in front of the sun, but the clouds (or whatever they are) are so thin, and the sun so bright, you can't see them. (Of course, this doesn't completely rule out the artificial sun theory, just provides an alternative.)

_________________
New to Uru? See this video.

KI numbers:
TOOO 194360
SkydiverTOOO 347569
Karaoke TOOO 9298427

Second Life: TOOO Fall

Oh, i am not explaining the glow on the horizon, could be bioluminescence, (hope i spelled that right) like the lake in the cavern.
There is no day nor night-cycle in Teledahn because the rotation axis is pointing towards the star and we are very close to that pole . This planet has a day and a night-side not cycles. I agree that it is written. That does not necesarily mean it was created.

On Earth, if you want to make a photograph of the clouds you would need to use an uv-filter. The reason for that is that we do not see ultraviolet-light. Because of that we clearly see the clouds that would be transparant or even invisible if we
could see uv-light. The negative in your camera however reacts to uv-light as well as (for us) visible light and records no clouds without the filter.
Something similar could be going on in both Teledahn and Relto but seemingly in reverse.

tommyap wrote:

Oh, i am not explaining the glow on the horizon, could be bioluminescence, (hope i spelled that right) like the lake in the cavern.

That's a good thought. There might be some kind of widespread fungus that glows when the sun is directly facing it... and like certain species of lichen on Earth that only grow on the north side of trees, these lichens only grow on one particular side of the mountainside... so, when they glow, their glow STOPS midway up the mountain.

Quote:

I agree that it is written. That does not necesarily mean it was created.

Can't be stated often enough--- the Art does not create an age. It is a known fact, attributed to the writings of Atrus, that when you write a decriptive book, you link to an alternate universe that already exists-- when you specifically describe a world, you end up linking to a world that matches the NATURAL features that you describe.

But something like an artificial sun, or the machinery that we see on Teledahn... --- you would still need to have possession of that technology, in order to add something like that to an age.. you can't just say "oh, and just for fun, the sun is artificial... " and 'the Art' makes it happen. Nope.

There has to be a reason for that artificial sun to be present, a reason why the author of the Age would prefer an artificial sun to a real one-- again, WHY it is there, has to make logical sense.

OOC comment--- to be honest, I'm not even sure if the Art can be used to add 'unnatural' objects like buildings, etc to an Age.. I know changes to an Age CAN be made, but I'm not sure of the extent.... things like houses, buildings, etc, may have to actually be built by hand, IN the Age.. and since Teledahn clearly has no indigenous intelligent life, that might mean D'ni workmen would have BUILT the machinery, etc.. including any artificial sun.

If I'm right, that could be another argument against it being artificial. it's just a matter of 'description and imagination' to utilize a REAL sun in the Age... but an artificial sun might have to be constructed manually.

_________________

Telemann was originally written to be a Garden Age for a Master in the Guild of Caterers. When it was discovered that the spores of the 'shrooms were a delicious flavouring, they were harvested by hand and sold. This continued until the death of the Master (I believe), it was bought by a certain Ventus and industrialised. This caused the complete exhaustion of the Age, when the Age was abandoned. It was much later rediscovered, and the slave trade there was established.

So, the 'shrooms were there from the start, and the spores were very likely unintentionally flavoured. That is my own words, but the information is in Sharper's journal. Considering that it was a Garden Age, it does seem unlikely that anything that could disturb the owner's rest was written.

As for the pulsars, while their periods are astronomically short, they are unimaginably heavy. Their gravity is so strong that to stand on them is instant death by flattening. They are only, after all, not far from becoming a black hole. Plus, they're only the size of a city, so it's not as though they're planets spinning that fast.

By the way, DimensionTravellerCalum's grandfather is a physicist. I was informed that Calum had briefed his grandfather on Teledahn by whatever means and motive, who then remarked that the disk cannot be a sun under any law of physics. Ask Calum yourself.

_________________
KI: 17967159

DLordofTime wrote:

By the way, DimensionTravellerCalum's grandfather is a physicist. I was informed that Calum had briefed his grandfather on Teledahn by whatever means and motive, who then remarked that the disk cannot be a sun under any law of physics. Ask Calum yourself.

I am a physicist too, yet no one listens to me Okay, questioning the approach itself is unpopular, and I am not taking sides. Actually, I lost track after it got into analysing game glitches.

DLordofTime wrote:

By the way, DimensionTravellerCalum's grandfather is a physicist. I was informed that Calum had briefed his grandfather on Teledahn by whatever means and motive, who then remarked that the disk cannot be a sun under any law of physics. Ask Calum yourself.

Big deal... OBi Wan told ME that's no sun.. it's a SPACE STATION!

Still... his comments do NOT provide any proof for your OWN theory. NO, quite the opposite--- I'm not a physicist... but I'm pretty sure a flying, glowing disc that hovers above the ground and follows a set pattern with no means of support nor propulsion, and shines like the sun is likewise as impossible, under any law of physics.

So it's not possible that it's a sun.. what's your point? Have you got any of that physics that proves what, OTHER than a sun, it actually IS?

But if we're gonna stick to the IC script:

MY best guess, is the Teledahn age must be on the verge of collapse--- if the sun isn't obeying scientific laws, the Author must have made the Age unstable, by writing in aspects that violate scientific laws. I'm surprised it lasted as long as it has.. for safety's sake, we'd best burn all the Teledahn linking books.

_________________

Last edited by HarveyMidnight on Sat Aug 18, 2012 2:43 am; edited 1 time in total

HarveyMidnight wrote:

That's no sun.. it's a SPACE STATION!

Nailed it, Debate over. It is the death star blasting a doomed age

HarveyMidnight wrote:

OOC comment--- to be honest, I'm not even sure if the Art can be used to add 'unnatural' objects like buildings, etc to an Age.. I know changes to an Age CAN be made, but I'm not sure of the extent.... things like houses, buildings, etc, may have to actually be built by hand, IN the Age. . .

OOC Reply -- I could be mistaken, but I believe Myst IV: Revelation established that buildings could be written into an age. Atrus supposedly wrote linking chambers into the prison ages as a means to meet with his sons and learn whether they had reformed. One of the sons (Achenar, I think) commented in their journal that the structure appeared one day, which makes me suspect it was written rather than built. That said, it is possible Atrus merely wrote the existance of the supplies he would need and quickly erected the structure while his sons were not present.

Of course, I also forgot the earlier example of Stoneship from the original Myst. Atrus wanted to explore where the two boys might have come from, and wrote in a ship. However, this demonstrated the extreme difficulty of modifying an already written age, as the ship became fused with the rocks. At least, the two boys had somewhere to play.

Seraku wrote:

HarveyMidnight wrote:

OOC comment--- to be honest, I'm not even sure if the Art can be used to add 'unnatural' objects like buildings, etc to an Age.. I know changes to an Age CAN be made, but I'm not sure of the extent.... things like houses, buildings, etc, may have to actually be built by hand, IN the Age. . .

OOC Reply -- I could be mistaken, but I believe Myst IV: Revelation established that buildings could be written into an age. Atrus supposedly wrote linking chambers into the prison ages as a means to meet with his sons and learn whether they had reformed. One of the sons (Achenar, I think) commented in their journal that the structure appeared one day, which makes me suspect it was written rather than built. That said, it is possible Atrus merely wrote the existance of the supplies he would need and quickly erected the structure while his sons were not present.

Of course, I also forgot the earlier example of Stoneship from the original Myst. Atrus wanted to explore where the two boys might have come from, and wrote in a ship. However, this demonstrated the extreme difficulty of modifying an already written age, as the ship became fused with the rocks. At least, the two boys had somewhere to play.

Hmmm... that does suggest it's likely to be much easier, when you are writing the Age, to link to a world where the real sun is already where you want it to be... than to try to change the existing age by generating an artificial one.

_________________

While it is my opinion that the Teledahn sun is, for all intents and purposes, a normal sun despite the unusual movement in the sky, this whole discussion is still an intriguing thought experiment.

It seems to have been well established that ages could be populated with life that was not explicitly defined by the wielder of the Art. Atrus' account of Stoneship and the meeting of two boys (of whose names escape me) is one such example.

We generally seem to agree that the Art allows the writer some freedom in expressing the desired age, while still finding a suitable match in the [nearly] infinite expanse of space and time.

Consider what might happen if Teledahn's writer intended for there to be a solar body orbiting the age in an unnatural manner. Next, presume there exists a world where previous inhabitants had sufficient technology to replace a, perhaps, dying sun with an artificial one in an attempt to extend the viability of the planet. If the writer's description best matched this existing world, then there could be a reasonable explanation why something artificial could exist without being "built" by the writer. As an added bonus, the writer might not be aware that the artificial sun is indeed fake, which could explain why there is no record of any previous research to determine how this "solar disc" works.

(Here's hoping I am not adding any fuel to the flames...)

DLordofTime wrote:

Telemann was originally written to be a Garden Age for a Master in the Guild of Caterers. When it was discovered that the spores of the 'shrooms were a delicious flavouring, they were harvested by hand and sold. This continued until the death of the Master (I believe), it was bought by a certain Ventus and industrialised. This caused the complete exhaustion of the Age, when the Age was abandoned. It was much later rediscovered, and the slave trade there was established.

So, the 'shrooms were there from the start, and the spores were very likely unintentionally flavoured. That is my own words, but the information is in Sharper's journal. Considering that it was a Garden Age, it does seem unlikely that anything that could disturb the owner's rest was written.

As for the pulsars, while their periods are astronomically short, they are unimaginably heavy. Their gravity is so strong that to stand on them is instant death by flattening. They are only, after all, not far from becoming a black hole. Plus, they're only the size of a city, so it's not as though they're planets spinning that fast.

By the way, DimensionTravellerCalum's grandfather is a physicist. I was informed that Calum had briefed his grandfather on Teledahn by whatever means and motive, who then remarked that the disk cannot be a sun under any law of physics. Ask Calum yourself.

Ah, we are getting somewhere.
If Teledahn was written as a garden age and the mushrooms allready there it must have a natural sun. Glad you agree.

You would be crushed under your own mass on any star and most known planets as well. (if you could stand there in the first place)

I used stars as examples for the simple reason that only very few planets outside our solarsystem are known, and the planets in our solar-system rotate to slow for comparisons. It is interesting to note that most stars are for the most part
hydrogen, the lightest element of all. (did i hear someone say Bismuth somewhere?) Imagine that.

The pulsar is a neutron-star not a black-hole, This one is about 28 to 30 km in diameter, The mass is estimated at 1.4 to 2 solar masses, far to little to be a black-hole, not anywhere near. THe progenitor of the super-nova that left (created) the pulsar was not massive enough either. If it had been massive enough the pulsar would not exist. So no singularity. If you do not know the significans of that, it means that we are within the boundaries of normal physics here.
You can download the statistics here:
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19700008151

Oh and another thing:
An asteroid-hit powerfull enough to penetrate through the Earth's crust into the mantle would have wiped out ALL live on Earth, with the exception of (perhaps) bacteria. Teledahn could survive the kind of hits we have had, the same way Earth
did. It may be flattened, but not to a few kilometers.

I have provided several links to wikipedia-pages, showing you how and why there is such a thing as rotation-flattening. Any body with enough mass will be flattened if it rotates. If you open one of these links, and scroll down, you will find a list of references. If you click on these references, you will arrive at sites owned by some very respectable institutes like MIT, the university of Hawaii, NASA, Harvard etcetera. On these sites (most of them) you can download the source publications in PDF format. This material is of the highest standards and quality. The sites are not owned nor controled by me and are therefore independant.

Person A says something to person B, person B says something to person C, person C shows it on a forum, .... and sudenly it is science?
There is a word for that, .... oh yes, it is called hearsay.

Two self-proclaimed scientist, ignoring science but offering hearsay in an attempt to ridicule said science instead?
What is the world comming to these days.


@ DimensionTravellerCalum:
Hi Cal
I hope your grandfather is well.
If you see him you could ask him about gyroscopic-precession, rotation-flattening, and hydrostatic-equilibrium. If nothing else you will probably get a free lecture.
Or better yet ask him to join. If his field of expertese touches the subject, that would be interesting.

Seraku wrote:

Consider what might happen if Teledahn's writer intended for there to be a solar body orbiting the age in an unnatural manner. Next, presume there exists a world where previous inhabitants had sufficient technology to replace a, perhaps, dying sun with an artificial one in an attempt to extend the viability of the planet. If the writer's description best matched this existing world, then there could be a reasonable explanation why something artificial could exist without being "built" by the writer.

The only real problem I see with that, is that this alleged artificial disc really doesn't act like a sun at all. It's not anywhere CLOSE to being 'unintentionally similar' to a sun, in the way it acts.

A sun would largely be stationary, and the planet would orbit around it-- a sun only appears to move from the planet surface, because the planet also revolves.

The people holding to the 'artificial sun/solar disc' theory are saying a planet can't realistically rotate that fast-- so the artificial sun is actually in motion on its own.. MUCH smaller than a sun, and much closer to the surface than a sun could ever be. The theory is: It's a flying glowy disc that swoops thru the sky, and it only looks like a sun if you're not paying much attention to it.

There's no way an author could have described a real sun, and without realizing, got this flying glowy disc in its place. Atrus said, in his writings, you have to start below the ground, when you describe an age... there's a LOT of detail you have to provide---sure, there's a window for a LITTLE uncertainty in what you create, but.... I can't see the likelihood of describing a real sun, and instead getting a facade that LOOKS similar to the real sun you described, but really isn't similar to it in any way.


And, again... in order to suggest Teledahn was an inhabited world before the D'ni linked to it, and that these prior inhabitants built the artificial sun... there would have to be evidence of indigenous intelligent life on Teledahn- an indigenous intelligent species with fairly advanced technology, to boot--- there's none of that. Teledahn is downright Paleozoic.

_________________

As this debate evolves, I'm beginning to think that the original intent was to have the "sun" be the "sun." It looks like a sun, and it appears to go around the sky just like the real sun appears to go around the sky. I think the speed of the sun is probably more a flub on the writer's part (i.e. Cyan). In game there are no real indications that it is anything but a sun, and any graphic errors are minor (from the normally accessed parts of the age. I think it was meant to be an actual sun and the speed being too high is probably do to either a miscalculation or lack thereof on mass vs. rotation speed of a planet.

Like all great stories, there must be some suspension of disbelief involved, like sound in space in Star Wars, or why Frodo and his buddies couldn't just ride the giant eagles to Mt. Doom in the first place in Lord of the Rings. Even Myst has had its series of incongruities over the years (think trap books from Myst). For me, I think the original intent was a sun. Now if the designers (Cyan, not IC writers) made a mistake about rotation speed, so be it,it is still a fun age to visit.

Guybrush Threepwood wrote:

As this debate evolves, I'm beginning to think that the original intent was to have the "sun" be the "sun." It looks like a sun, and it appears to go around the sky just like the real sun appears to go around the sky. I think the speed of the sun is probably more a flub on the writer's part (i.e. Cyan). In game there are no real indications that it is anything but a sun, and any graphic errors are minor (from the normally accessed parts of the age. I think it was meant to be an actual sun and the speed being too high is probably do to either a miscalculation or lack thereof on mass vs. rotation speed of a planet.

Like all great stories, there must be some suspension of disbelief involved, like sound in space in Star Wars, or why Frodo and his buddies couldn't just ride the giant eagles to Mt. Doom in the first place in Lord of the Rings. Even Myst has had its series of incongruities over the years (think trap books from Myst). For me, I think the original intent was a sun. Now if the designers (Cyan, not IC writers) made a mistake about rotation speed, so be it,it is still a fun age to visit.

Precisely, Guybrush. If we can step back and treat this as a game for a moment, it is easier to argue that the sun is likely supposed to be a real sun, despite the fast movement. When I played through the game, I never even questioned whether the sun was real or not. And that is the key here: What is a player supposed to think in order to solve the puzzles related to the age? There is nothing that requires us to observe that the sun is actually fake. Teledahn's artists and designers would not have had a reason to make it artificial.

Cyan (and Presto and Team Revelation, for that matter) have always been good about cleverly hiding clues about the whole D'ni mythos throughout their games. Compared to other adventure games, I have always felt the Myst series in particular was the best designed series, providing so much substance and atmosphere during the game that it spills out and feeds these types of after-game discussions. But that attention to detail would make me suspect that an artificial sun would have been a key design point and not an accident. The rendering artifacts are, in my opinion, more likely to be just artifacts and not some subtle clue or hint to something out of place.

Of course, this is not to say the whole IC discussion is invalid. Teledahn functions as an age either way. It might seem less practical for the sun to be artificial, but logically it still fits. And since canon never established it one way or the other, the physics discussion can still be fun and thought-provoking. (Well, that is when the discussion does not devolve into personal attacks on character and intelligence.)