Sokko
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Yep, it's already a very small pinpoint; distrubute that along the border, and it would have the intensity of a 60-watt light bulb. Besides, it's 10 miles up, remember?

Oh and agaricus, you're going to have to let go of your gravitational fields. Remember, it's not the point itself that causes the stuff to implode; it's the wrap-around "algorithm", if you will, that the border/pole uses. The scheme states basically that anything that wraps around from one side to the other is scaled according to how large the destination side is in relation to the originating side. "Implode" and "explode" were bad words to use, and don't really describe what goes on. It's more like a sudden horizontal compression/tension force. This causes a body to fall apart because it has been scaled horizontally but not vertically, which renders it unstable.

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agaricus5
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Sokko wrote:
This causes a body to fall apart because it has been scaled horizontally but not vertically, which renders it unstable.

Yes, I realise now what the "point" is - it's an infinitely thin vertical line at the centre of the "pie".

Oh and agaricus, you're going to have to let go of your gravitational fields.

Ooh...

It's more like a sudden horizontal compression/tension force.

"Sudden"? Where has this force come from then?

Remember, it's not the point itself that causes the stuff to implode; it's the wrap-around "algorithm", if you will, that the border/pole uses. The scheme states basically that anything that wraps around from one side to the other is scaled according to how large the destination side is in relation to the originating side. "Implode" and "explode" were bad words to use, and don't really describe what goes on.

Okay, but when the scaling goes on, the masses change density, right? So at the crust end, the density of the matter is very low because it's been pulled apart by the "scaling" (I'll ask a separate question on this later...) and at the "point/line" end, the matter has been "scaled" down to a thickness of an infinitely thin line (or at least a very thin line). Therefore, since all masses have a gravitational field, (See - I can't drop my gravitational fields - what keeps all the Eighthers on the surface of the pie? ) the gravitational field of the "line" will be infinite (I'll explain in terms of this equation - F = G((M * m)/ r^2) tomorrow because I'm tired now) as its thickness is infinitely small.

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Sokko
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Augh! In the cherry dimension, we don't need no stinkin' gravitational fields!

The force comes from nowhere. It's a form of probability drive. (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

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mrimer
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The force comes from a for loop.

agaricus5
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Sokko wrote:
Augh! In the cherry dimension, we don't need no stinkin' gravitational fields!

So what keeps the Eighthers on the "pie" surface?

The force comes from nowhere. It's a form of probability drive. (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

So why, if it comes from nowhere, does it happen to the point at the "North" end of the pie most then... why is it not random?

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Sokko
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Just because! ARGHF... too much reality!

The cherry dimension allows a specialized kind of gravity which pulls down in a single direction with a constant force at all locations on the pie. This gravity only applies within the boundaries of the pie; if you were to somehow break free, you would not be attracted back to the surface. The "looping" effect is caused by a mysterious warp field created by ancient computer programmers long ago.

I just realized that you can never get to the north pole because you would bump up against seven duplicates of yourself; plus, the pole is right in the middle of the volcano the sun pops out of. So really, the only way to kill yourself with the loop is by walking off the southern border, and they probably have a wall to prevent that.

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trick
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Aargh. I had a whole bunch of ideas, and you guys come up with most of them before i get myself to login and post. Oh well.

Some other things (warning, wild unscientific ramblings ahead):

* Since the sun is in the middle of the north/centre pole, it's really shaped like a orange boat, so we've got cherries and oranges.

* Since the mass of the sun is sucked out from its center line, and the sun's gravity pulls it towards this line, that means the sun has huge amounts of, eh, "anti-gravitational" energy beaming outwards (like light and heat) that keeps it from collapsing all over the south pole. This energy saturates the landmass and inhabitants of the Eighth, thus giving them the energy they need to keep them from being pulled towards the Center Pole.

Enough about the sun. Erik, you said a year has 333 days over 9 months of 37 days each, but what defines a month and a year ? A month here on earth is based (at least originally) on the cycle of the moon, but the Eighth doesn't have a moon. A year is based on the four seasons. Does the Eighth have seasons and if so, which, and how does that work ? Does the height of the sun change as the year goes by ? By how much ?

ErikH2000
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trick wrote:
Erik, you said a year has 333 days over 9 months of 37 days each, but what defines a month and a year ?

Good question!

In the winter, the sun is at its highest point in the sky. It takes 333 days for the sun to reach its lowest point, and this is the summer season. The next day, the sun is again at its highest point. So the coldest day follows the hottest day. The whole cycle is a year.

A monthish period of time is needed for planning and procrastinating long-term tasks, such as reorganizing piles in your house so that the guest room can be reached again. If somebody declared a month was 10 days, we'd all feel a little rushed. The calendar pages would fly by at a brutal pace. Fifty days would seem glacial and we'd wonder if our lives were stagnating. So it is universal truth that a month should be something between 20 and 40 days. The Eigthers were lucky enough to have a year evenly-divisible by 37. All the people that wanted nine-day months were shouted down.

-Erik

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trick
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Interesting

This brings up the question of weather. How hot is summer, are there any rain (or even rain seasons), and does it snow in winter ? If so, since the hottest day follows the coldest day, are there much floodings and such on the first summerday as all the ice and snow melts ?

Also, since a month has 37 days, the people living in the Eighth have no weeks, at least not the same way we do. Maybe the first day of a month isn't part of any week ? Then the rest of the month are 6 weeks of 6 days each, or maybe 4 weeks of 9 days each.

[Edited by trick on 06-14-2003 at 03:14 PM GMT: Added 4/9 weeks..]

mrimer
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No, the coldest day follows the hottest day. I'd imagine then that if it snowed, tree branches would snap under the weight of all the snow falling on them. (That's what happens often where I live. It's not that there's a lot of snow, but that there are still leaves on the trees, and they get weighed down by all the snow that falls on the tree and then break off their own branches.)

Incidentally, our earth is actually closest to the sun in winter time (for the northern hemisphere) and furthest away in summer. It the angle (tilt) that determines the season. Remember it doesn't tilt back and forth, it just stays tilted one way, and as the earth orbits the sun a different side of the globe is more directly facing it. (Of course I don't expect any of this to matter in the cherry cobbler dimension. Man, Erik, did you ever expect people to start associating your world with berries?!)

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Sokko
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Nonono, the sun is regular ball-shaped! Calling it the cherry dimension has nothing to do with actual cherries! Waitaminute... then why...? Never mind. Besides, the sun has to be a symmetrical shape that is evenly divisible eight ways.

I think you have the wrong concept of the North Pole. There are absolutely no gravitational forces involved here, other than the mysterious force that pulls all creatures towards the surface of the pie. The sun has no gravity, and the imaginary line at the pole that wraps around to the border has no gravity. The mass of the sun is not "sucked out"; an extremely thin line of it in the middle wraps around to the southern border. Besides, even if mass generated gravity in the cherry dimension (which it doesn't), the sun would be way too small to do anything like that.

So every time the sun pops up, it pops up a little lower than last time, but when it reaches the lowest point, it goes right back up to the top. Why is that? I guess we'll never know.

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agaricus5
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Sokko wrote:
So every time the sun pops up, it pops up a little lower than last time, but when it reaches the lowest point, it goes right back up to the top. Why is that? I guess we'll never know.

Exactly...I told you that you needed gravity and some sort of energy loss/gain cycle..



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zex20913
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I think the cord to the big air pump machine continues to get dusty, and when it gets a bit too hot, their god dusts it off, making it run perfectly again.

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trick
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mrimer wrote:
No, the coldest day follows the hottest day.

Right. Oops.

Sokko wrote:
Nonono, the sun is regular ball-shaped!

It can't be ball-shaped! Since the north pole ends in a point and is mirrored 8 ways, the sun is mirrored 8 ways too - so it looks ball-shaped, but really isn't.

I think you're right about the no-gravity thing, tho.

Sokko
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looks ball-shaped, but really isn't

Yeah, that's what I meant.

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mrimer
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Yeah, it's (to continue with the metaphor) more like an orange slice.

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Sokko
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D'oh! I see what you meant when you first said that. But for all intents and purposes, it's a ball. Because that's what it looks like.

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agaricus5
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There is a serious problem with the repeating "pie" slice:

You get eight "mirrored" versions of the slice around the "pie", all of which are exactly identical. For this to work, it requires every atom on the slice to do the same thing as on another. Therefore, you will have 8 identical versions of everything doing exactly the same thing at the same time. Therefore, of the eight Beethros that exist, which is the one we are following in this story?

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Sokko
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It doesn't matter, 'cause there are:

8 identical versions of everything doing exactly the same thing at the same time

Since everything is identical, we can't even tell which one we're following. And, more importantly, why should we care if it's all exactly the same?

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Daisai
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agaricus5 wrote:
There is a serious problem with the repeating "pie" slice:

You get eight "mirrored" versions of the slice around the "pie", all of which are exactly identical. For this to work, it requires every atom on the slice to do the same thing as on another. Therefore, you will have 8 identical versions of everything doing exactly the same thing at the same time. Therefore, of the eight Beethros that exist, which is the one we are following in this story?

Assuming one version of Beethro to be the "correct" one, if he were walking straight north on the "correct" slice, the version on the direct opposite slice would function like a reverse mime. Wonder what fun you could make with those in the game? Imagine controlling normal and reverse mimes at the same time?

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Daisai
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Oh, and who says the sun is hot anyways? Reason the place isn't freezing might be coz the pie is still in the oven

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trick
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Nonono, there's not 8 copies of anything! There's 8 views, that's all. (At least that's how i understood it, feel free to smack me down if i'm wrong).

It's like if you take a walk around the world. After having walked some time, you get back to where you started, but it's not a copy of the first place, it is the first place. The Eighth works more like a cone, where you have to walk farther nearer the edge (south pole) than the tip (north pole), and the eyes of everyone on this cone follows its surface.

What complicates things is that the Eighth is flat when seen from above.

agaricus5
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trick wrote:
Nonono, there's not 8 copies of anything! There's 8 views, that's all. (At least that's how i understood it, feel free to smack me down if i'm wrong).

It's like if you take a walk around the world. After having walked some time, you get back to where you started, but it's not a copy of the first place, it is the first place. The Eighth works more like a cone, where you have to walk farther nearer the edge (south pole) than the tip (north pole), and the eyes of everyone on this cone follows its surface.

What complicates things is that the Eighth is flat when seen from above.

Then...

It can't be a pie at all - just a slice...

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trick
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agaricus5 wrote:
It can't be a pie at all - just a slice...

In a way. But i picture it more like a cone, actually. I thought about this a bit today, and came up with a theory. I have no idea how Erik feels about it. Let's hope he doesn't kill me.

Anyway, my theory is that the Eighth actually is shaped like a cone physically. Its size is what makes it seem like an eight-way mirrored circle. As i said before, the view of the people and animals follow the surface, so it appears flat to them. The reason it appears flat from above is that space itself curves around the Eighth. Also, if we saw this from outside space, objects would be larger the farther they were from the surface of the Eighth, causing space to seem flat. This is why you can't travel outside the surface of the Eighth, but always have to be directly above it (it's an illusion, really, caused by the curving of space). Also, if one were to dig a hole in the surface, straight down, it would eventually come out on the other end of the cone, which means that the hole would come up at the same distance from the north pole, but shifted 22.5 degrees east and west (one sixteenth of a circle). However, this isn't really possible, as the sun is located in the middle of the cone at night. This again means that it actually doubles as both the Eighth's core and the sun.

The only thing left to explain then is the north pole/south pole teleportation relationship, which i explain by magic. (I thought maybe the axis going through the sun and the north pole is actually the end of the universe, but let's not get into that.)



- Gerry

zex20913
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Heehee.

Science...science...science...MAGIC!

I like the explanation.

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agaricus5
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trick wrote:
The reason it appears flat from above is that space itself curves around the Eighth. Also, if we saw this from outside space, objects would be larger the farther they were from the surface of the Eighth, causing space to seem flat.

Err... I don't get it.

Does this mean that space is cone-shaped above the Eighth?

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Sokko
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Eeeehhh... can't it just be a normal flat pie? I liked it better that way. Easier to visualize. None of this space-curving nonsense.

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agaricus5
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Sokko wrote:
Just because! ARGHF... too much reality!

The cherry dimension allows a specialized kind of gravity which pulls down in a single direction with a constant force at all locations on the pie. This gravity only applies within the boundaries of the pie; if you were to somehow break free, you would not be attracted back to the surface. The "looping" effect is caused by a mysterious warp field created by ancient computer programmers long ago.

I think it sounds a bit too Matrix-ish for the "Eighth".


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mrimer
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It's topologically a cone, but not physically a cone! It's flat...just like our world.

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Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

trick
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zex20913 wrote:
Science...science...science...MAGIC!

Yep. You can't have any explaination without magic in it. That would just be too scientific

agaricus5 wrote:
Does this mean that space is cone-shaped above the Eighth?

Actually it means that space is inversely cone-shaped around the Eighth - except the flat circlular bottom, which defines one end of the universe..

Sokko wrote:
Eeeehhh... can't it just be a normal flat pie? I liked it better that way. Easier to visualize. None of this space-curving nonsense.

Sure it can. I was just making it up while i was showering after having slept too long. Don't put too much into it

agaricus5 wrote:

Sokko wrote:
Just because! ARGHF... too much reality!

Um, where did that quote (and the one below it) come from ? Got edited away ? Anyway, it's not any more real than anything else in any reality is real - but then, if you can think it, it exists, if only in your head, and so, it's reality.

mrimer wrote
It's topologically a cone, but not physically a cone! It's flat...just like our world.

In a way, that's what i was aiming for, but in another way, it was not - because if space curved like i described, the cone would be flat in that space, but since space itself is curved, when you look at it from another reality, it also is cone-shaped physically - so, both and none.

Hm, since space and time is two of the same, maybe that could somehow explain Beethro's time-controlling powers ? (the ability of thinking forever about the next moment in time) .. Nah, that's just magic. Got to remember magic.

Anyway, sorry - i like messing with people's heads sometimes

- Gerry