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Messages - Ms Duck

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1
At first I thought  you ment The Shedd in SmF.  If instead you mean the portal Harry used to get to Edinburg from Chicago (I think it was near a slaughterhouse) that was monitored by the contracted out P.I. and Mouse, yah, that certainly seems to contradict things.  Plus Harry's experiences following his Mother's advice.

I think those apparent contradictions could be remedied by considering the intent though. 

The underlying point I was trying to make though, is that it isn't necessarily a 1:1 topographical correlation between the mortal world and the NN. 

I had a prof in my junior year who was lecturing on mathematical fields do a pretty good job of explaining how you could topographically map an infinite plane onto a sphere.  That took some mind bending.

in one of my applied classes, during the final exam the computers crashed. I had some pastels in my art bag, and we all ended up sketching our final topographies :)


2
Fair enough, but then you really do have a seeming contradiction re: the shed in TC, the Fetches in PG and Ways in general.

the NN seems to change, albeit at a slow rate. Many of the predictions made by Maggie sr 40 years ago still work just fien, for example.

And yet, still only a miniscule fraction of a fraction of a fraction of even our solar system, much less the universe as we know it.

Of course, if they can unfold those extra dimensions into something more akin to 3D space, then that's all fairly pointless, as a straight line can involve curves and other wacky spacetime shenanigans to make the distances whatever anyone wants.

as the vast majority of the N N must be traveled by foot, the concept of it being much larger is irrelevant.

let's be honest, it would take you longer to get to the nearest star then the universe has time left

furthermore, Magic in the df seems to work much like gravity- it warps reality around it, in scale to the amount of magic. Thus, having the NN only be 'so large' sits with me just fine.

3
Even in this reality, I don't buy that somehow the NN is only an infinitesimal fraction of our actual universe.  I mean, that's not even one AU.  That's not even the area of the Sun in 3D space.  Much less the areas that humanity has expanded to via satellite and probe.

My understanding of (admittedly, a half remembered quote) is that Earth to the Moon is about as far as you can travel, but not as far as there is, in the same way that about 40 Km is the highest we can fly.  There's PLENTY more out there, we just can't get to it right now.

I think you seriously underestimate how big that space is. Even just in 3D, its 237,924,270,443,818,600 cubic KM...

that oh about 220,300 earths

gee, is there enough room ???????????

and it has way more than 3 dimensions. (Harry suggested 11 in CD, based on modern string theory, but he could be wrong)

4
There's just a bit too much human self importance in that statement for a duck to be making :P Realistically We know there are planets that can support life out there. So in a Verse created with pseudo-science why wouldn't this be true?

Who says that there's only life on Earth?  All we know is that you can't get further than there in the NN.  Doesn't mean that that's all there is.

it's not and it's not. re read the woj again; the NN orbits worlds other than earth in other realities.

- for example, the canim, the marat, the people of the sun'..

 And for all we know; there are other NN's.

and we know there is intelligent life from outside the NN, the vord came from there.

the problem, imo, is getting from one 'magical space' to another; without magic, you have to use tech.. like the vord did.

while FTL may exist in the Jim verse, there is no evidence yet that it does; even his most advanced species uses, by star trek standards, very primitive technology.


so to some up: our NN contains within it all the possible earths that might exist on the spectrum of free will, including ones in which human life never even evolved.

ga zillions and ga zillions and ga zillions of worlds

there are other alien worlds out there, that are not in our NN, as they are to far away.

(the vord homeworld)

and probably ga zi;llions and ga zillions more :)

while its possible those worlds may have ,magic and NNs of their own, Jim has not said so yet that I know of.

5
I think that at the very least, there has to be some sort of topological 1-1 mapping.  After all, I think we have evidence that you can open a portal to the RW anywhere in the NN.

The volume of the NN in three dimensions exists out to lunar orbit; in CD its implied it's 11 dimensional. That's a lot of damn room.

as magic comes from life, and the NN is supported by magic, I think the idea that it ever extended farther than the moon is a bit dubious.


6
I really need to watch all of the Buffy seasons.  Apparently Jim's idea of a Mirror Mirror story is strongly influenced by an episode in one of the later seasons.

P.S.  I didn't even have a TV for the 4 years between 2000 and 2003

haven't had one in 15 years, don't miss it :D

7
So? All that proves is the NN spirit realm contains thoughtforms from other planets. Doesn't make it reality and Sorry ducky, your Numeromancy doesn't impress without sound logical reasoning taken from cannon. The NN isn't reality and while it can contain alternate worlds it doesn't make them 'real' in the technical sense. All I infer from this is that since the NN only physically encompasses earth and moon, it used to be bigger. The alien worlds in it exist in spirit only because the outside has already retaken them.

got any canon to back that up? because Jim says they are real.

Quote
Dudesan: Do The Dresden Files and The Codex Alera share the same metacosmology? Were the many migrations (such as the ancestors of the Alerans, the Marat, and the Canim) through the Nevernever? Should we worry about a Vord invasion of Earth? Bob mentioned that many worlds thought to be fictional do exist in some sense- I think his example is that "Spider-man is real... somewhere out there. What, you think this is the only world?"
Jim: 2) What kind of insane person would design a universe like that? Next you're going to come up with some kind of theory about how a single extended family bloodline runs through all of these obviously unrelated story universes, and how all of my central heroes actually belong to one family.
Psssh. No one's going to buy that.
Dudesan: What we've seen of the cosmology of The Dresden Files seems very Earth-centric. Is that because everything really does revolve around the Earth[1] , or because we're seeing only a tiny slice of a much bigger picture? Are there other planets in real-space inhabited by extraterrestrial sentient beings? If so, do they have their own analogues of wizards, fairies, gods, etc? Are supernatural things influenced by their belief as it is by those of humans? If so, to what extent do these "spheres of influence" overlap?
Jim: 3) Everything revolves around /this/ earth, in the Dresden stories. But not necessarily around all (or even a majority of) the other earths that exist in the continuum of possibility created by free will. Other, parallel realities have other worlds playing a more central role, and some of them have earth in a nice quiet backwater, peaceful, relatively conflict free, and boring.


8
Spider man isn't 'just in the NN'. the NN contains other worlds that the DF earth; there is room in there for 9,188,2801,591,004,303,761,991,879,201,232,836,019,976,271,010,838,154,206,141 possible alternate earths... and from the WOJ, some of them aren't earth at all, but alien worlds. Very possibly the source worlds for the Canim, Marat.. maybe even the outsiders  ;D

so yes, its a dang big multiverse  ;D

9
DF Reference Collection / Re: The science of gravity spells.
« on: June 01, 2013, 07:24:25 PM »
things are a bit err Squishy on this but maybe what happened is that Harry opened a Picogram sized Black Hole for a Picosecond so that the effect was SPLAT! (and what we "saw" was the result of Harry bending Space/Time how he wanted).


Of course Now since Harry is The Winter Knight and can tap The Winter WellSpring he might decide that an entire BLOCK needs to be flatter.

I could also see Harry making a Staff and Cane combo for when Father Forthill needs to Rebuke Mountains.

nothing happens in either of those scenes that can't be explained by Harry simply 'moving' the weight onto a smaller target.. for a second, the cars weighed much less and the vampire much more.

all he did was transform potential energy into kinetic energy.. much like a water wheel does. It wasn't a gravitational effect, since nothing else was changed.

the thing about gravity is it propagates at either light speed or a bit above it ( it's been measured at 1.5 c, but that's controversial) and since it only decreases with the square of distance (and a very long wave form, maybe) everything should have been squished, not just the vampire.

frankly Harry's a wizard, not a physicist  ;D


10
DF Reference Collection / Re: The science of gravity spells.
« on: June 01, 2013, 06:42:24 PM »
Um, this isn't even close to neutron star gravity. Neutron stars are hundreds of billions of times Earth gravity.
Knnn omitted the ^.. surface gravity of a neutron star is 10^11 g, not 1011 g :D

even so, 1011 g (assuming knnn's math is correct, I haven't done it myself) is more than enough to have wrecked the city, even for a tenth of a second.

since Harry is still walking and talking, I assume the force was purely kinetic, not gravitational, and was much less.

11
DF Reference Collection / Re: The science of gravity spells.
« on: June 01, 2013, 03:57:33 PM »

12
DF Reference Collection / Re: The science of gravity spells.
« on: June 01, 2013, 07:01:40 AM »
No, because my argument is that what is happening is not like a bomb exploding.  There's a lot of energy, but it's affecting a wide area of volume* or large amount of mass at once, not just a small part and then expanding.  Even if I agree that there's nuclear bomb levels of energy being released (which I don't) it's the difference between spreading it out or releasing it at one point and then having the effect diminish.  Because of the inertia of all that other mass in the way.  Not instantly, but eventually.

Nuclear bombs in Nevada don't wipe out cities in California.  Or even cities just a few miles away from ground zero.  What Harry was doing was effectively spreading out that blast from a hypothetical bomb over the whole area at once.  So the center is greatly reduced, but the outskirts get a bit of a rise in damage.

*Yeah, I know, area of volume.

im not talking about Nevada. im talking he was three feet away.

and the mall was a few hundred... ooops

its simple; amount of force could not have been in the range Knnn calculated. even ignoring my first two points, the impact from that force hitting the pavement would have made an immense hole, and the shockwave would have redecorated nicely

not mention conservation of energy.. harry can't manipulate power on that scale... hes never done anything even close.

the effects of the spell match what the weight of a few cars would do, if they were dropped on someone. not megatons.. tons.

13
DF Reference Collection / Re: The science of gravity spells.
« on: June 01, 2013, 03:42:48 AM »
Does this mean that we can never use arguments based on calculations again?

No, just be aware they have a large fudge factor :)

It's enough to know Mab outclasses every wizard on earth, we don't need to know by exactly how much

14
DF Reference Collection / Re: The science of gravity spells.
« on: June 01, 2013, 03:03:24 AM »
Yeah, but when it comes to things like that, barometric pressure IS mass.  It's the amount of mass whatever column of air of X area would be.  And neutralizing gravity doesn't somehow cause it to instantly expand.  As we saw when he used it in Changes, it mostly just made them rise up a little bit as their force pushing off of the ground was no longer canceled by gravity.  Eliminating gravity doesn't mean that the other air there will suddenly stop holding it in or anything like that.  Even if it's in a cone and not a cylinder, the air isn't going to instantly bounce off the air under the effect of gravity, it's still got inertia to deal with.  So no superimplodey vacuum, much less an explosion.

Im sorry, but I don't believe that is correct. In a hyperstatic fluid, the force in one direction (aka the pressure) is only a very small part of it; there other factors than just gravity at play (compression, vectors, expansion due to temperature..)



.. and that's the simplified version

as to the inertia question you may be correct but as Knnn pointed out, the forces involved are far larger than most bombs. Your theory would then say bombs can't explode, because of the inertia of the air around them.

:D

this is far enough out of my field I'd rather not tackle the proof, while I had three years of physics in college I'm not an expert, and this is a lot more complex than the Mab or Harry calculations ( for one thing the equation above is only for static, laminar flows. oops.)

even ignoring the air issue, that much of gravity should have drawn in all the mass around it, instead of just squishing down.



oops...

it looked to me like harry just concentrated all the weight of the cars on the vampire, for a fraction of a second. that's several tons of force, more than enough to make vampire pancakes.. and not so much it would wreck half the city.

15
DF Reference Collection / Re: The science of gravity spells.
« on: June 01, 2013, 01:40:50 AM »
In case you noticed, it isn't.

em getting set on fire and burning down later doesn't quite count ya know

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