- Scarlet: The stars are so pretty! And there are so many of them!
- Julius: And every star is being orbited by at least one planet like ours.
- Scarlet: Wow, so many planets! Are you sure?
- Julius: The great astronomer Elisa Bloom determined that. She knew everything about the stars!
- Julius: She also gave names to all the stars. The sparkling blue one there is Anwar. And the big green one there is Ori.
- Scarlet: What are these other planets like?
- Julius: Some are barren and lifeless. But many of them are home to strange animals and plants.
A Sky Full of Stars 034
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29 thoughts on “A Sky Full of Stars 034”
BlackDragonSlayer
inb4 the machine of eternal summer is a spaceship 😛 😛 😛
Kitsune
Ori and the Sea of Stars
Vicious Sand
Orbital mirrors would be more likely than a spaceship. Some attitude thrusters, some convex/concave controls. They’re not much more than a flying frame with a steering program. Some of the fancier designs roll up the mirror like it was a old-school school movie screen. And it should double the amount of sunlight an area gets. It would need some care and tending to keep it away from known threats like orbital debris or the moon if they have one. But establishing a semi-permanent warm zone on the planet would be a big win for Scarlet. Spaceships tend to go somewhere, drift somewhere, or crash somewhere. One, or half of one could be up there very easily.
drazsyr
Hallowed are the Ori.
Hegel-Marx
If we assume that Lavarel is in our galaxy, it is much closer to the center of the galaxy than our Sun. That’s why there are many more bright stars in the sky.
It could be that the Machine is actually a control device for the orbital mirrors, as suggested by Vicious Sand. That would direct the story more towards SF than fantasy.
They were built by a former advanced civilization, which is occasionally mentioned in the comics, which collapsed and much knowledge was lost, so the mirrors are now non-functional. It will take a lot of knowledge to restart and control them. Maybe even about geology (see 016), to calculate the optimal required temperature, that is, the required additional energy sent by the mirror.
This would also explain the idea of a “secret superweapon that could pulverize all of Grondar”, mentioned by Scarlet in “Sky Full of Stars” 010. The mirrors, if all focused on a small area, can increase the temperature to an unbearable level.
HKMaly
“Unbearable hot” – euphemism for temperature melting lead.
Crystalgate
The Stars would shine brighter if they are close to the center, but would they have different colors? What phenomena in our universe could cause stars to appear to have different colors in the sky?
doclbn
Stars do have different colours (spectra, actually), and it can be seen with the naked eye in our skies too. Take for example the easily recognizable Orion constellation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(constellation)
On a clear, dark night one can easily differentiate „upper left“ Betelgeuse‘s distinctly reddish shine from „lower right“ Rigel‘s blueish tone. The very bright star Sirius, qite close to the left, has even another discernible tint. The colours in our sky are (sadly 🙂 way less prominent than depicted in this comic, though.
The different colours originate mainly from different surface temperatures („cooler“ stars are redder), and to a lesser amount from different elements in the stars‘ composition – somewhat related to the age of the stars.
Crystalgate
Thank you. I found some information about the colors of the stars and they go from red to yellow to white to blue. The green and pink stars are a bit suspect here. That said, if we assume the colors are here for reasons that applies to our universe, it seems to me that this universe has to be older than our. There are more metals around and more stars has burned out a significant amount of their hydrogen supply.
doclbn
@Crystalgate: Exactly, sounds like you had a good source there 🙂
Stars are even more „colourful“ – and truly spectaculary so – if you consider the many wavelengths our eyes *can‘t* see – radio, infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray and beyond. The Westerlund 1 star cluster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westerlund_1, for example, is packed full with „exotic“ stars (compared to our sun), brilliantly shining across all spectra.
Since our atmosphere shields us from most of these wavelengths, the most spectacular images are taken by the space telescopes like Hubble, Webb and Chandra.
I find the Webb image of Westerlund 1 particularly stunning:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Westerlund_1_(wide-field_view)_(potm2409b).jpg
doclbn
… meh, can‘t link to the image file here 🙂
The quite new Webb image is not linked in the English wikipedia article yet, but in the German one:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westerlund_1
Zitchas
I love that starscape. I hope we get to see more of it.
I also find his knowledge of astronomy to be very impressive. Almost on par with Scarlet’s mathematics. I do wonder, however, how much of it is speculation, and how much is knowledge. He sounds very confident when he states that “Some are barren and lifeless. But many of them are home to strange animals and plants.”
The predecessor civilization truly was advanced if they had means to have in-depth knowledge about the life on not one, but mnany other planets in other systems.
Crystalgate
A lot of what Julius says is wrong in our universe. I’m curious about whether or not this is supposed to say something about this universe or if the sky and what Julius says is just flavor. To be frank, this is a recurring thing about this comic, I don’t know what information that we have been given is supposed to inform us about this world or if just flavor. For example, is there a greater thought about what magictec can and cannot do and how easily?
Tadrix
Well, consider a setting where a civilisation was technologically advanced (but had different, fancy power sources like the crystals) but then something broke and the most maintenance-intensive stuff went defunct because people were more concerned about survival and the society reflected that. So, for example, we haven’t seen any extensive communications networks — most likely that’s because maintaining all the towers and electronics would be a luxury in a world where all that manpower is needed elsewhere. Instant communication is optional — messenger and postal services are cheaper and simpler to maintain. Likewise, our own society is globalised and heavily relies on supply chains — these breaking down would mean labour-intensive industries, or those habitually outsourcing, or industries that need resources that are mined elsewhere (like car manufacturing) going as well. Back to horse-drawn carriages it is! On the other hand, iron isn’t that rare and gunsmithing isn’t that demanding materials-wise even if the produce would be a shadow of what it used to be. Taking this a step further, the society forgets that which it doesn’t need (knowledge of IT networks is useless without modern computers) and its political system would reflect its tech level (large democracies are impractical because of the abysmal speed of communications, so its either small democracies on the scale of city-states where things like referendums can be managed, or alliances of said city-states, or larger autocracies like kingdoms or empires that have relatively smaller bureaucracies. So, having electricity (given there are energy crystals), quality simple tech, waterworks and indoors plumbing (which was a thing long, long ago too, by the way, with Ancient Rome being an example), relatively simple weapons? (For all we know, all these futuristic things have are crystals and a barrel to direct output — that’s an oversimplification, of course, but they might be much, much simpler than modern machinery. And, since there might be not one moving part, the weapon could be practically unkillable for as long as you can replace the shielding — that could be as easy as replacing a crudely-made pipe —, assuming some of the discharge would hurt the weapon. If the direction can be controlled by, say, cutting the crystal in a particular way, even that might be not a concern.)
To add to this, a civilisation going downward might lose production capabilities, but retain repair capability and work on existing stocks if the item in question was reasonably easy to repair and the item was ubiquitous enough. Using the analogy of our own world, if something were to happen, expect modern vehicles to become roadside junk. Older cars without all the fancy electronics and not made to fail would fare better as they are, in principle, repairable in just any garage and a replacement part could be milled on the spot — so these would last for as long as there are fuel reserves, then die too. Forget about import goods. Forget about goods that require massive industries. On the other hand, power can be restored from local hydroelectric plants and similar and the metallurgy needed for them isn’t exactly stellar complexity-wise, cartridges can be reloaded, black gunpowder weapons can be made on the spot by somebody who knows what he’s doing, plumbing can be maintained, although if food production were dwindling, the population would shrink anyway, people would get out of cities to rural regions, so, again, there’d be less workforce for massive projects lower on the survival priority scale as the surviving ones would be doing jobs related to provisions. If civilisation doesn’t collapse outward, in a few generations you’d have “science fantasy” with magitek, that is, well-maintained artefacts of times gone by that people know how to use and keep in working order, but might not really know how to create.
Sorry for the text wall.
Tadrix
Oh, damn, doubly sorry, had no idea it’s this bad. xD At one point power died and it seems that the text was retained, so if it looks like I’m repeating myself — yup, and there’s a reason for that. Also, didn’t know that paragraphs get merged without HTML tags, as usually my answers are a paragraph long. Anyway, TL;DR: imagine our own society with access to energy crystals, but then food becomes scarce, supply chains break up, but the civilisation doesn’t collapse. In a few generations you’ll have what we’re seeing in the comic.
doclbn
Well, I for my part enjoyed reading your essay 🙂
Contains some fair points, valid not only in Lavarel‘s fantasy setting…
Felis Dee
Just by sheer probability and the likelihood of the exact right conditions needed for life evolving on any planet, I would adjust that last sentence to “MANY are barren and lifeless. But SOME of them are home to strange animals and plants.”
Vicious Sand
The barren ones just get ignored. Or seeded.
If we ever make it to space, I’m sure that somebody’s going to try every combination they can to see what can grow in space. Kudzu. Potatoes. Mushrooms. Where’s there’s a rock, there’s room to put something there.
HKMaly
The term is “terraformed”.
But yes: If they are in galaxy like ours, they are wrong. Of course, they may be in different sort of galaxy, one where someone already did the hard job of spreading life to most planets …
Vicious Sand
Terraformed is if it’s the whole planet/moon. What about just dropping window-boxes, garage sized greenhouses, to see what can grow in the dust covering or on the rock surface?
Tadrix
https://www.astronomy.com/science/how-many-planets-are-there-in-the-universe/
Astronomers estimate that there is roughly one exoplanet per star in our galaxy. Of course, some stars have many planets – our own Sun has eight. And some stars have none. But if a star lives long enough, forming planets seems to be the rule, rather than the exception.
So not every star has a planet, but on average, there’d be a planet.
Dilandu
Well, their knowledge of astronomy most likely is limited and close to late XIX century – when it was perfectly fine to assume that SOME life could exist anywhere. Mars was considered potentially habitable up to early XX century (when spectral analysis showed that there is no water in Mars atmosphere). And Venus was considered likely habitable till the first Soviet space probe attempted to land – and scientists were really shocked when it was crushed by atmospheric pressure almost an order of magnitude greater than even quite generous safety margins. The scientific assumption was, that Venus atmosphere is likely 2-3 times more dence than Earth one. Engineers decided to play safe, and designed probe to stand 10 times more density. They totally did not expect to meet atmosphere with almost 100 times greater pressure than on Earth surface!
TK
Not sure if lore dump or Julius being unreliable. (≖_≖ )
bh
Every star has a planet? Why should that be true? It’s not true in our corner of the universe, is it?
Dilandu
1) Its a child speaking – well-educated, but still a child
2) The local knowledge of astronomy most likely close to early XX century, when the idea of every star having plahet systems was perfectly reasonable (because the only star system they could observe was Solar)
Pappenheimer
Nope. not all stars have planets. For instance, O and B class stats are unlikely to, being blue giants – extremely hot, bright and short lived stars. We also used to think that multiple star systems wouldn’t have planets, but we’ve found some, so there you are. (The orbital mechanics are probably pretty weird and form the basis for the book “The 3 Body Problem”, but don’t take the book as gospel.)
Dilandu
1) Again, it was said by a child, who may simply exaggerate known facts
2) The local knowledge of astronomy seems to be limited
Pappenheimer
Re: Space Kudzu, it might not take much gene tweaking to develop kudzu that would spread across the surface of a planet with near-zero atmospheric pressure and no water that wasn’t frozen or locked in rocks. I have faith in kudzu. Just don’t let THAT variant get seeded on Earth.
Dilandu
It would either froze or overheat or poison itself on Earth.
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