Magrethera

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here is a world from Subsector A of the Unknown Subsector, (Something I am working on for my Solomani Rim Wormholes campaign, it is an artificial World. First an intro:

Magrethera
It was a beautiful dream, the election returns were in and he was over the top, it was a historic campaign and the first for the business man, who up until now concerned himself primarily with building, hotels, apartment buildings and resorts, he was very good at it too, but this was his first entry into the political arena and his opponent was scandal plagued and pathetically weak, he was celebrating his victory with his family and campaign advisors, when the Secret Service Agent shook him awake. “Mr. President, Mr. President, please wake up.” The President found himself lying on the cold concrete of the capital steps, there was a podium above him with his family Bible, a Gutenberg Bible, on top, not that he read much if it, it was more of a museum artifact that he invested in and loaned out to various museums, but today it was brought out to his swearing in ceremony. The President propped himself up on his elbow stiffly, his back ached, “What’s going on Fred?” the President asked, then he looked around and needed no answers, everyone was on the ground or just getting up like he was, a few were standing. “Unbelievable!” the President said, “did everyone fall asleep during my swearing in ceremony? More and more of his staff were being woken up as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court rose groggily to his feet as well, brushing off his black robes. The President scanned the skyline, the various building of Washington DC held their familiar shape, it was then that he noticed the swollen red-orange-yellow moon displaying a quarter phase near the horizon, the moon lacked the craters and mares that he was familiar with, and instead sported smooth lava plains, and dark volcanoes, it looked rather like pictures he’d seen of Jupiter’s moon Io. “What happened?” the President asked. The Secret Service called on his radio, rather slack jawed at the answers he was getting, “Mr. President,” he said, “Everyone was asleep, people were asleep in their cars, passengers were asleep in airplanes on runways, it’s amazing no accidents occurred!” “What could do this?” the President demanded. “We’re still finding out sir! My men and women are waking up, we’ll have answers soon enough.”

Later that day, the newly inaugurated President sat in the Oval Office, the President was looking at a picture of Niagara Falls, the park was in the foreground with some astonished tourists looking on, on the other side of the falls, the Canadian side, and there was just empty wilderness. His advisors showed him a picture of the Mexican Border, there was an American town on one side of the Rio Grande, on the other side was empty desert. The Secretary of Defense called him on the phone, “We have sent a Marine Expeditionary Force into Mexico, there are on the site of Mexico City, we’ve confirmed the GPS coordinates, there is nothing there, only empty wilderness, and some wild beasts like we’ve never seen.” An Air Force General called next, “We’re inspecting the site of JFK Airport in New York City, the buildings are different, and there are strange aircraft instead of the usual passenger jets, much like Reagan International and all the others.” An Admiral spoke next to the President, “All of our aircraft carriers are accounted for, we’ve sent expeditionary units into Spain, Morocco, South Africa, and China, and they are all telling us the same thing, there is no one there, no sign of human activity or presence, it seems we are alone on this planet, I’ve talked to some astronomers as well, the stars are all wrong, the planets are all wrong, our geologists have taken some seismic readings, and some large hollow cavities have been found miles below the ground! We can’t detect the Earth’s core, there is an empty hollow cavity a few thousand miles down, the seismic waves stop there and return, various regular support structures are all found beneath the ground. We’re not on Earth, we’re on a fake Earth, and we’re not even in our own Solar System!”

So what we have here is an artificial Earth the tech level of the planet is 17, the tech level of the people living on its surface is 7. There are tech level 17 starports replacing all the international airports in the United States, Domestic airports remain unchanged. The characters here are of fictional origin or are world famous, most of the data was drawn from historical sources and where their are gaps in the knowledge the Artificial Intelligene made fictional characters to fill in the gaps. One of the key technologies of tech level 17 is matter transportation, basically its the ability to convert matter into energy, and energy back into matter, there is an entropic energy loss whenever this occurs, so either fusion or matter/antimatter reactions fuel the process. Artificial Intelligence is a key technology at tech level 17, so basically this is the tech level at which the machines take over, as they are smarter than humans. The AIs live in this artificial planet that is modeled after Earth, only the United States of America circa 2017 is replicated here. the matter transporters create live flesh and blood humans out of the fictional creations that are a product of the machine's historical knowledge and imagination. the matter transporters also created the landscape mountains lakes oceans on the surface of this planet. the people who were created woke up on what in their imagined world was January 20, 2017.

So what do you think?

 

[phavoc]

To confirm the GPS coordinates means the GPS satellites were replicated. That may or may not be true based on the other. It might be prudent to mention the satellites are there or not - that helps with the recon of the rest of the world.

What about the animals on land, and in the seas? Were they replicated as well? From the sound of your description if it was on the continental US it was replicated, as were ships. What about land bases? What about Alaska and Hawaii?

Caverns only 4 miles down are easily reachable using standard drill technology, so expect a few boreholes to be drilled soonest.

If these people were replicated, does the process duplicate everything down to the atomic level so that analyzing a body would show no difference with the original?

It's an interesting adventure set-up. Do you plan on any mysteries out in the wilds of the world? Strange vortexes and phenomena?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

To confirm the GPS coordinates means the GPS satellites were replicated. That may or may not be true based on the other. It might be prudent to mention the satellites are there or not - that helps with the recon of the rest of the world.

It was replicated by an artificial intelligence, not a natural phenominon (ie a timestorm for example) The best way to get the right idea, imagine you picked up a history book and replicated all the important figures, and then randomly rolled up 320 million characters, and imaginatively given them all backstories that are consistent with each other and recorded history. the President mentioned in the story began life on the steps of the replicated capital building, he never gave his inauguration speech, although he has the memory of doing so, the details of his past life were taken from historical records, with the AI filling in all the missing gaps logically and consistently, all the others that did not make their history books were all created out of whole cloth by the AI computer, the computer is planet scale so it has the resources to accomplish this. All the people it created have memories of a past life which never existed, but all consistent with the historical record which was available to the AI computer. The AI computer runs simulations of past histories, and then materializes what it simulated on the planet's surface using matter transporter technology.

What about the animals on land, and in the seas? Were they replicated as well? From the sound of your description if it was on the continental US it was replicated, as were ships. What about land bases? What about Alaska and Hawaii?

Alaska and Hawaii were replicated as well, the AI knew what it was doing and were the borders of this country were, but it only wanted to replicate one nation from that era, all other minor possessions of the USA were also replicate, including Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Marshal Islands among others. Where the USA wasn't replicated, the AI computer replicated a Pleistocene wilderness instead (ie woolly mammoths, saber-toothed tiger and the like, a few tribes of Neanderthals, and cromagnons as well are found in Europe and Asia. Some of the prehistoric pachyderms are in that area which would be Canada and Mexico, those were among the many "beasts" reported on by the Marine Expeditionary Units.

Caverns only 4 miles down are easily reachable using standard drill technology, so expect a few boreholes to be drilled soonest.

There are passages to the planet's interior located underneath the starports, the technology replicated is Tech Level 14, as reconstructed from the Solomani Scout Ship which investigated the planet and triggered this whole event, it basically dematerialized the scout ship with a disintergrator bean, analizing it molecular structure and combing through the scout ships computer data base, it reproduced the jump drive, and stocked each starport with a number of jump ships ranging in hull tonnage from 10 dtons to 2000 dtons, these are the strange "aircraft" reported on, the humans just have to figure out how they work. The technology is compatible with that of the Solomani Confederation, although translated into 21st century English, the language has drifted of the past few thousand years. If a Solomani or Imperium starship pays them a visit, a translation program might be required upon first contact. The planet would reveal its artificial nature upon scans by Imperium or Solomani scout ships. the crew of that first Solomani Scout ship was rematerialized among the Population of the United States, he appears at the Reagan Starport in one of the passenger lounges. There are many copies of their scout ship throughout the mulitple hangars of the Starports throughout the planet, Other starships were recreated from plans stored in the Solomani Scoutship database. Basically every airplane that stood at each international Airport was replaces with a similarly sized starship.

If these people were replicated, does the process duplicate everything down to the atomic level so that analyzing a body would show no difference with the original?

There actually are no "originals" the famous individuals, were based on historical records, the AI did not have direct access to their bodies however, it created individuals which looked like those historical characters, and gave them memories that would be consistent with recorded history.

It's an interesting adventure set-up. Do you plan on any mysteries out in the wilds of the world? Strange vortexes and phenomena?

The USA basically spreads out to cover the planet, since there is no one else. The Hollows of the planet are quite a ways down, much of the subsurface mineral wealth was replicated including oil deposits, so gasoline supplies won't run out anytime soon. Most people will prefer to live in their existing homes, a few will venture into the wilds. Most have jobs which keep them where they are. The lack of other nations to trade with disrupts international trade, this becomes interstellar trade when official contact with the Solomani Confederation, the Imperium and possibly the Vegans is established. The Airline pilots will have a lot of training to do before they learn how to fly these starships or to calculate a jump. The Starports have helpful AI programs to do this. The main AI of the planet has a hands off policy after replicating the country, it basically sets up the situation on the planet's surface and observes without interfering. The planet probably gets an amber zone, Imperials and Solomani are going to exercise caution around it, though the AI takes no action after its creation. There is a vast labyrinth of passages and chambers below the planet's surface as well.

 

[phavoc]

There actually are no "originals" the famous individuals, were based on historical records, the AI did not have direct access to their bodies however, it created individuals which looked like those historical characters, and gave them memories that would be consistent with recorded history.

There's one hiccup to your issue here. With only the single Solomani person to use, everyone is going to have the same underlying socializations, basic morals, etc. The computer should not know how to randomize this without having extensive experience with humans. Also the people who are getting houses and such will have no backstories of their own. If all there is to build this is the historical data, that's not going to be sufficient to build an entire personality from.

This sounds similar to ST, where the computer was able to 'build' personalities on the holodeck. The difference is that the computer was programmed by humans and could learn based on experiences. Here the computer has nobody to learn from except a single individual. How would it know how to create the opposite sex personality wise? The DNA would give it enough information to create bodies, but certainly not personalities. And DNA modeling would not be enough to 'teach' new replicants what it's like to experience things like physical stimulation, taste, etc. These are all learned and individualistic.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

There actually are no "originals" the famous individuals, were based on historical records, the AI did not have direct access to their bodies however, it created individuals which looked like those historical characters, and gave them memories that would be consistent with recorded history.

There's one hiccup to your issue here. With only the single Solomani person to use, everyone is going to have the same underlying socializations, basic morals, etc. The computer should not know how to randomize this without having extensive experience with humans. Also the people who are getting houses and such will have no backstories of their own. If all there is to build this is the historical data, that's not going to be sufficient to build an entire personality from.

This sounds similar to ST, where the computer was able to 'build' personalities on the holodeck. The difference is that the computer was programmed by humans and could learn based on experiences. Here the computer has nobody to learn from except a single individual. How would it know how to create the opposite sex personality wise? The DNA would give it enough information to create bodies, but certainly not personalities. And DNA modeling would not be enough to 'teach' new replicants what it's like to experience things like physical stimulation, taste, etc. These are all learned and individualistic.

The answer to your question is this planet was built by humans, but in this case it was humans from a different timeline that the classic Traveller setting. In this timeline the Jump Drive was never invented, humans (and their descendents) spread throughout the Galaxy by means of slower than light travel, the other side of the wormhole had about a million years more of human and post human history, the Galaxy is about 100,000 light years in diameter, so if their average speed was one tenth the speed of light, they could do this. Eventually they did invent a means of faster than light travel, but this was by the creation of wormholes, unfortunately this had a time travel effect, creating multiple timelines due to travel into the past. More precisely the wormholes already existed but were unusable by humans until they were expanded, some of these wormholes lead to the past. The classic Traveller timeline is about one million years in the past relative to the other side, where Magrethera exists.

Magrethera has access to this timeline's historical records, which of course due to the million years of history between itself and the historical era being reproduced, its not fully complete. Humans in this future timeline actually serves as the Galaxy's ancients, and most of the Galaxy's sentient races are descended from humans or other animals engineered by humans, prior to this, the Galaxy was a boring place, alien life consisted mostly of the single celled type, not another technological alien civilization was encountered in this Galaxy unless it was later derived from the one that originated in this Galaxy's Earth, since it is one million years later, the Galaxy is a more interesting place, with multiple "aliens" all DNA based, with the primary exception of the "Machine Race" that was derived from computers and robots, it was they that built this artificial planet. the Machine Race remembered a lot, they had good data storage, some of that data was stored in the artificial planet Magrethera, then it discovered the Jump Drive from the other side of the Wormholes, it had to acquire one for itself, for self-defense purposes, it turns out that the originators of the planet's programming, long before the planet was built were Americans, so it was that country which was reproduced in this particular case, other countries from Ancient Earth may have their own versions of Magrethera.

Self-reproducing robots spread through the Galaxy and began terraforming planets, this one actually advanced to the stage where it actually built a planet. The Machine race also built the wormholes, and later forgot about them, but before that happened, they collected DNA samples from Ancient Earth as accessed through the wormholes, some of the changes they wrought in different timelines created races like the Ancients in the Traveller timeline (non-canon, my own version of it). What ever role the Ancients played in the Traveller timeline, humans played in this Galaxy. Most of the information Magretha collected from the Solomani Scout ship was how to build a Jump Drive, something it did not previously know how to do. Once it had reassembled a version of the United States of America on this planet and given them access to Star Travel, it considered its job done and went back to "sleep". The planet has a rocky rind about 100 km thick, most of the technological components of the planet are below that, there is a giant fusion reactor in the planet's core. the humans on the planet's surface are basically on their own after their initial creation, a few smaller AI robots were left to be of assitance and help to reproduce TL14 technology, but that's it.

There is something destructive about sudden possession of advanced technology, as a precaution, the Magretha AI only created one Nation, the USA in this case, that way there would be no problem with an imbalance of political forces on this globe. Life changes radically from what the inhabitants of this planet remembered, access to cheap fusion makes their gasoline powered cars obsolete, star travel allows them to colonize other planets in this system and potentially others There is about 325 million inhabitants on this planet, if I got the population figures right, some other planets in this sector have a higher population. They have been pretty much isolated from each other, until the Jump Drive was brought over from the other side, so now there is the potential for invasion.

This is the subsector Magrethera is in:

I think I'll make CARVORE an Orc inhabited planet, not the Orc Homeworld, but it is an aggressive race that just acquired the Jump Drive from "Othersiders" and they are eager to expand an empire for themselves, a potential adversary for the Magrethera humans.
And this is the subsector on the opposite side of this wormhole:

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Magrethera
January 20, Southern California.
William Shatner woke up in his ranch house to the crowing of a rooster, the television showed static, followed by station identification. The disheveled newscaster apologized for the sudden interruption in programming. William Shatner hadn’t much noticed, the only thing he noticed for the moment was that the ringing in his left ear had stopped. William snapped his fingers next to his left ear to make sure he hadn’t lost his hearing. “Remarkable!” William said to no one in particular, the ringing had stopped. William Shatner had been suffering from tinnitus since 1967, when his hearing was damaged along with the now deceased Leonard Nimoy by a special effects explosion, during the filming of the Star Trek Episode “Arena”, now it was gone! “Hey Elizabeth!” William called, “You’re not going to believe this, the ringing in my ear is gone!” A 40-something blond woman walked into the living room, “Hey Bill you should see this,” She said pointing to the window. A reddish last quarter Moon was up in the morning sky, there were volcanoes and lakes on that strange and unfamiliar Moon. “Oh my God!” William Shatner said, “Is this for real?” William and Elizabeth ran out the door and down the steps, one of the horses in the pen got up, startling a few chickens that nestled in the enclosure. The Shatners looked up in the sky aghast, “I can’t believe this,” Shatner said, “The Moon is too big, and red! It’s like an episode of Star Trek!” Shatner’s phone rang, he answered it. “Hello,” he said, “Yes this is he, who am I speaking with?” After pausing for a while, William put down the phone, “It’s the President,” he said. “The President of what?” Elizabeth asked. “The United States,” William Shatner answered, “it seems that we’ve been invited to the White House.” William picked up the phone, “Of course Mr. President, we’ll be happy to attend.” After hanging up, William said, “I hope this is not a practical joke!”

 

[Rick]

Tom, I have 2 general nitpicks which I hope you'll take in the spirit of constructive criticism, which is the intent behind them. The first is that you really, really need your own blog to put these posts on, one that you can link to from here - discussing your worlds and setting here is great, as you have a really interesting take on things, but I tend to avoid most of them as they are too badly formatted on here - you need your own site where you can vary the formatting to suit the information/pictures you are putting up. The second one is re-using names from other sources - you don't need to. Most of your ideas share some common themes with other authors work, but usually goes off at a tangent into your own creation, which makes it generally your original work - so spend 5 minutes making up an original name and it will be seen as 100% your own work - case in point 'Magrathea/Magrathera' has been used ad infinitum since Douglas Adams; if you changed it to, say, 'Astrathera', it would be much more original (I think) and reference the Atlantis myth rather than Douglas Adams.

Sorry to be picky, but I do enjoy reading your stuff when I can wade through the posts!

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Tom, I have 2 general nitpicks which I hope you'll take in the spirit of constructive criticism, which is the intent behind them. The first is that you really, really need your own blog to put these posts on, one that you can link to from here - discussing your worlds and setting here is great, as you have a really interesting take on things, but I tend to avoid most of them as they are too badly formatted on here - you need your own site where you can vary the formatting to suit the information/pictures you are putting up. The second one is re-using names from other sources - you don't need to. Most of your ideas share some common themes with other authors work, but usually goes off at a tangent into your own creation, which makes it generally your original work - so spend 5 minutes making up an original name and it will be seen as 100% your own work - case in point 'Magrathea/Magrathera' has been used ad infinitum since Douglas Adams; if you changed it to, say, 'Astrathera', it would be much more original (I think) and reference the Atlantis myth rather than Douglas Adams.

Sorry to be picky, but I do enjoy reading your stuff when I can wade through the posts!

Planets often get their names from mythological sources, it could be in universe that the people who named that planet were thinking of an ancient Terran Myth, which was originally authored by Douglas Adams, and they misspelled it. All names come from somewhere. I could put random sounds together, but they wouldn't sound nearly as good. The really good sounding names are ripped off from somewhere else, just as the names of planets of our Solar System were ripped off from Roman Mythology. For instance in an earlier post I created the Alpha Centauri system starting with the name Prometheus, I named the other planets in the system after deities and heroes from Greek Myth where Prometheus - the bringer of fire came from. There were two stars, known to us as Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, and I cannot imagine the inhabitants of that system referring to their two Suns by those names, so I made up the names Helios (after the Greek Titan of the Sun, as opposed to the Greek God of the Sun Apollo) The second dimmer star I called Pyros, the greek word for fire I believe, B is more the color of fire than A after all and it seemed appropriate for one of the first star systems the Terrans would colonize.

By the way how would I create a blog anyway? I never done it.

I find nothing wrong with Douglas Adams, his novels tend not to be so serious, but who's to say the fellow who named the planet didn't have a sense of humor? I don't think the people who live on this planet would refer to it by that name, or perhaps they would, as soon as they find out its artificial, they would probably be more familiar with Douglas Adams than any of their immediate Interstellar neighbors, though they might stubbornly insist on calling it "Earth" even though they know it is not! The other planets in the Solar System need original names as well. the planet further out from this star is a Mars like World but with a more substantial atmosphere, it is covered with ice sheets so it looks white in Magrethera's sky, rather than the Martian red, it is volcanically active as well and possesses a magnetic field, so it got the name Jadis after the White Witch from the Narnia novels. Its better that planets have names rather than numbers, its easier to talk about them that way.

Maybe I'll consider more original names later on when I think of them, but as they say, all names come from somewhere. None of the names of the planets and asteroids in our Solar System are original, unless it is an alpha-numeric code of meaning only to astronomers. Random sounds don't make good names! "Ahblahfoevue" would not make a good name.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Millennium Falcon
Harrison Ford wakes up in the cockpit of this Starship instead of his airplane. He doesn't know how he got there. He gives William Shatner a ride to Washington DC.

Its a "GalaxyQuest" version of the Millenium Falcon, the Planet's resident AI had some records, and it threw together what technology it had, plus that of the Solomani Scout ship to build it. Certain items, such as the Deflector shield is unique, the cost is based on the classic black globe generator. I also had to introduce Quad pulse lasers, since the movie version of the Falcon had them, and they were definitely pulse lasers and not beam lasers, and I didn't forget the pop-up turrent with quad lasers, that Han used to mow down a squad of storm troopers one time.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Magrethera
It was a beautiful dream, the election returns were in and he was over the top, it was a historic campaign and the first for the business man, who up until now concerned himself primarily with building, hotels, apartment buildings and resorts, he was very good at it too, but this was his first entry into the political arena and his opponent was scandal plagued and pathetically weak, he was celebrating his victory with his family and campaign advisors, when the Secret Service Agent shook him awake. “Mr. President, Mr. President, please wake up.” The President found himself lying on the cold concrete of the capital steps, there was a podium above him with his family Bible, a Gutenberg Bible, on top, not that he read much if it, it was more of a museum artifact that he invested in and loaned out to various museums, but today it was brought out to his swearing in ceremony. The President propped himself up on his elbow stiffly, his back ached, “What’s going on Fred?” the President asked, then he looked around and needed no answers, everyone was on the ground or just getting up like he was, a few were standing. “Unbelievable!” the President said, “did everyone fall asleep during my swearing in ceremony? More and more of his staff were being woken up as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court rose groggily to his feet as well, brushing off his black robes. The President scanned the skyline, the various building of Washington DC held their familiar shape, it was then that he noticed the swollen red-orange-yellow moon displaying a quarter phase near the horizon, the moon lacked the craters and mares that he was familiar with, and instead sported smooth lava plains, and dark volcanoes, it looked rather like pictures he’d seen of Jupiter’s moon Io. “What happened?” the President asked. The Secret Service called on his radio, rather slack jawed at the answers he was getting, “Mr. President,” he said, “Everyone was asleep, people were asleep in their cars, passengers were asleep in airplanes on runways, it’s amazing no accidents occurred!” “What could do this?” the President demanded. “We’re still finding out sir! My men and women are waking up, we’ll have answers soon enough.”

I wrote this on my first post in this thread on December 7, 2015. Magrethera is an artificial recreation of Earth with just the United States of America on its surface, but look at who I predicted would be President in 2017! There were 17 candidates on the Republican side, and I think 3 or 4 on the Democrat side. You could probably guess I was talking about Donald Trump, he was the most interesting candidate back then, so I thought it would be fun to write about him or a duplicate of him in this scenario, and now its 12 days before the election and we'll see shortly if I was right. I have a few ideas about making Magrethera hollow, not just tunnels and caves, but a habitable surface on the outside which looks like our Earth, and a hole in each polar region.

The inner sun in the center is actually powered by a white hole, it is a small white hole of about one negative Earth mass, it radiates gamma rays in all directions, and that impinges on an inner sphere surrounding it made of Tungsten, which is heated up till it glows a pale orange-red color, but is still solid, thus shielding the inner habitable surface from the gamma rays, and also providing a source of illumination for the inner surface. The white hole also provides the antigravity needed to hold everything to the inner surface. Now the shell is especially dense, its mass is 2 Earths, so it has 1-g of surface gravity on its outer surface and -1-g of gravity on its inner surface. The inner Sun looks enormous compared to the real sun on the outside, it resembles a class M Red dwarf star, though it is much smaller, its surface is solid but very hot.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

On the other hand here is another sort of hollow Earth.
In which case we would use this map instead.

This map is undistorted regarding the internal layout of the cylinder. I'll have to check the math regarding the scale.

 

[Rick]

So, Tom, what you appear to be saying is that post-election, the rest of the world gets so fed up with the USA that it transplants the entire country to an artificially created world some distance away where they can carry on without bothering anyone else?

That's a bit harsh, isn't it? :twisted:

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

So, Tom, what you appear to be saying is that post-election, the rest of the world gets so fed up with the USA that it transplants the entire country to an artificially created world some distance away where they can carry on without bothering anyone else?

That's a bit harsh, isn't it? :twisted:

Maybe.
Well behind the scenes, the World is a complicated place, most worlds in Traveller only have a single planetary government. Suppose I did that with all the nations in the World, what would happen then? There are 196 nations in the World, what is each one of them going to do, particularly North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran, which I believe are the leading trouble makers in the World today? Imagine if they all were equipped with TL 15 technology. Lets substitute a grav vehicle for every car and see what happens. Thousands of Cubans fly over to Florida, the wall Trump was planning on building becomes useless! What happens to the World's nuclear arsenals? Each ship in the Navy is replaced with a starship of the appropriate kind, fighters become space fighters, carriers become spaceship carriers. I suppose mud huts in the Third World stay mud huts.

 

[Tathlum]

My compliments to the guy who built Norway. The fjords are really well done. He deserves some sort of award.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Lets have an informal poll, which do you like better a Cylinder World or a Hollow Earth? Hollow Earth it seems would be higher tech than a cylinder world. The most difficult thing about a Hollow Earth is that Sun in the center an the antigravity coming out of it.
The radius of a black hole is given by the formula

Black hole radius = (2.95 * Mass/Mass of Sun) km
Since the Sun has 333,000 times the mas of the Earth, we can find the radius of the white hole at the center of the Hollow Earth.
White hole radius = (2.95 * 1/333,000) km = 8.86 mm.
A white hole is basically a black hole turned inside out, it has a repulsive antigravity field, and an inside out event horizon that will not allow light to enter, at a radius of 6400 kilometers, it provides a repulsive gravitational force towards the inner surface of a sphere equal to the Earth gravity field. A white hole is a very theoretical object, and it is likely not a very stable object. You know how gravity slows down time? Well antigravity speeds it up! White holes are connected to a black hole elsewhere and else when. Everything that has ever fallen into its associated black hole in some other Universe comes out of a white hole all at once! And once it all comes out, the White hole disappears, as the mass that comes out negates its negative mass.

Perhaps we can substitute something else for the White Hole. Perhaps we can use magmatter, but use magmatter with negative mass. It doesn't take a lot of magmatter volume wise to make a black hole. If you can form a ball of that stuff 1 millimeter in radius, it will have the mass of Earth's Moon and collapse into a black hole. Now if you have magmatter with negative mass, you can't form a ball that is 1 millimeter in radius without I exploding due to gravitational repulsion, but if you space the mag atoms out a bit, its molecular bonds will hold it out against the force of its repulsive antigravity. So if we have a lump of mag matter that is say perhaps 10 millimeters in radius with the negative mass equal in magnitude to the Earth, then it will perhaps not explode, or we can reduce its density and expand its size as much as we need to achieve this effect.

Lets look at the top portion of this diagram.

Instead of the flux tube in the center, we have a lump of negative mass magmatter. We have two spheres surrounding it, the inner sphere is the source of illumination for the inside of the outer sphere. The inner sphere is 510 kilometers inside the inner radius of the outer sphere. As the diagram indicates, the inner sphere is a visual display, it provides a holographic image of an imaginary sun, the inner sphere also blocks most of the negative curvature of the outer sphere. that means if you look towards the horizion while standing on the inner surface of the outer sphere, the horizon you see is that of the inner sky sphere blocking the view of the outer sphere as it curves up around you. There are holes providing access to the inside of the Hollow Earth at the poles of this planet. There is enough magmatter sandwiched between layers of rock in the crust of the outer sphere to provide 1-g of positive attractive gravity at the outer surface of this hollow Earth. It is not possible to dig or drill through thi layer of mag matter, the only way to get to the hollow Earth cavity is through the 500 km wide holes at the poles of this artificial Earth.

This is probably something the Ancients could make. The illumination if powered by a fusion or matter conversion reactor on the inside of the inner shell.

 

[Rick]

So, Tom, what you appear to be saying is that post-election, the rest of the world gets so fed up with the USA that it transplants the entire country to an artificially created world some distance away where they can carry on without bothering anyone else?

That's a bit harsh, isn't it? :twisted:

Maybe.
Well behind the scenes, the World is a complicated place, most worlds in Traveller only have a single planetary government. Suppose I did that with all the nations in the World, what would happen then? There are 196 nations in the World, what is each one of them going to do, particularly North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran, which I believe are the leading trouble makers in the World today? Imagine if they all were equipped with TL 15 technology. Lets substitute a grav vehicle for every car and see what happens. Thousands of Cubans fly over to Florida, the wall Trump was planning on building becomes useless! What happens to the World's nuclear arsenals? Each ship in the Navy is replaced with a starship of the appropriate kind, fighters become space fighters, carriers become spaceship carriers. I suppose mud huts in the Third World stay mud huts.

You'd end up with yet another version of a Traveller 2300 universe?

 

[alex_greene]

Maybe.
Well behind the scenes, the World is a complicated place

Then let me make this less complicated for you.

US politics is off topic on these boards. Either take the conversation to the Off Topic Lounge and be prepared to have your thoughts deleted by the next automated sweep, or leave the politics off here.

Either way, this part of the discussion is closed. Talk about anything else, or this topic gets deleted.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

In another day it won't matter.

 

[alex_greene]

In another day it won't matter.

Yeah, it will. And the political chitchat stays off the boards.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here is my latest idea for the map of Magrethera. In this case its a cylinder that rotates once every 90 minutes.

The continents are relatively undistorted

This world comes with its own fusion powered light source, it need not orbit a star. One idea is to have it orbit the fifth gas giant orbiting Terra, this planet is projected to have around ten Earth masses, it has a perihelion of 200 AU, a Semi-major axis of 700 AU, and an Aphelion of 1200 AU, and an orbital period of 10,000 to 20,000 years. Because it has an artificial sky (the inner cylinder) you can project whatever latitude of daylight on the inner habitable surface of the outer cylinder.