Re: (TFT) hollow Cidri

[Peter von Kleinsmid <pvk@oz.net>]

At 01:46 PM 2/5/06 -0600, David Michael Grouchy II wrote:
> But in an artificially created gravity corona the math shows that the 
> gravity does become a thing unto itself and the effects become quite 
> strong as one enters the ponts in space where it lay.

Maybe I don't get what you mean by "an artificially created gravity 
corona". It looked to me like you were describing a shell of unspecified 
diameter where the thickness of the shell is equal to one Earth diameter 
and density, and then with some anti-gravity magic in the middle which was 
scaled like gravity but in the opposite direction, repulsing everything 
from a point in the center of the shell. I wasn't really sure what that was 
there for (to stop the shell from collapsing into the center under its own 
mass due to gravity, I assume?) or what its force distribution was across 
the shell, though.

However since you said that whatever the anti-grav's properties were, from 
the frames of reference of people on the inside and outside of the shell, 
they both had 1g pulling them to the inside of the shell, that the 
anti-grav force would then be more or less a wash, to achieve a situation 
where someone seems to be on a flat world on both the inside and on the 
outside, with the net gravity effect of the shell itself causing the 
difference that results in a perceived Earth-like gravity on the surface of 
both sides. From that I concluded that the gravity effects while travelling 
through the shell would be just like travelling through an ordinary planet 
(minus the [not-particularly important for this purpose] centripetal 
component), and so it would be the same - it would start to seem weightless 
in the middle. Of course, there might be other sensations there too - even 
without a magma core. For instance, there might be extremely high pressure 
from all the air above the core pressing in - just like even dipping to the 
bottom of the ocean will crush most submarines.

One other issue for a Newtonian model of such a Cidri, though, is the 
day/night cycle even on the outside. If Cidri were so huge as to be 
effectively flat, and if it also rotates quickly enough to have a 24-hour 
day/night cycle due to a sun and stars being seen rotating around it like 
on Earth, then would there not be a mega-astronomical difference between 
the centripetal forces at the equator, compared to the poles? Seems like 
you'd need not a constant balancing force from the center, but one designed 
to balance those incredible differences of force.

If the Mnoren had the means to balance such forces (or the same power to 
create astronomically-scaled force fields, but not quite as strong as 
needed for the above), then maybe they'd use them to make Cidri shaped like 
one or more panel sections, rather than a complete sphere.

I like your idea though of many worlds linked by gates, with the "one huge 
world" concept not something necessarily literally true. The Cidri creation 
story says there are hundreds of other worlds and alternate timelines which 
even the first Mnoren could travel between unaided, so your interpretation 
seems like it would be included no matter what Cidri itself is.

With ordinary wizards able to summon intelligent creatures, create TFT 
illusions and solid walls, gates, soul jars, and so on, though, the 
question of what reality is and what all the physical rules are, clearly 
isn't limited to Newtonian or even modern physics.

If the gamemasters even aren't sure what the world is, then the inhabitants 
surely won't be either. Historical and even current Earth is of course full 
of alternate cosmologies, many of which are not Newton-compatible. So (just 
to make it clear I'm not mistaking what I expect most or all of us already 
understand) GM's can consistently run games as if Cidri were whatever they 
want it to be.

PvK
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