Conworld random thread

[þeprussianfrog]

Idk if I'm writing in a right place, but something about seasons and directions as a possibility.

In Proto-Finnic, *suvi originally meant both summer and south. In modern Finnic languages its meaning varies, for example it is summer in Estonian and south in Karelian (Southern Karelian dialect/language is Suvikarjala), and in Finnish I think it's both, but in a poetic or archaic sense.

[WeepingElf]

I think it's far easier to refer to the general location the sun sets or rises than some "highest point" you can only carefully observe.

I must agree here.

Yes. There is a low-tech method of determining east and west known in German as indischer Kreis 'Indian circle', by means of a gnomon and a circle drawn around it, from which of course north and south can then easily be determined as well. It was first mentioned in sources from ancient India, hence the name, but it probably was known also, for instance, in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe.

[chelsea]

I'm envisioning a communication system for an aquatic, echolocating species. A network of water-filled boxes spans the continent, boosting the sound waves if necessary, before shooting it towards the next box.

Why not set up a series of reflectors in the water? It would have to route through enemy territory, or take a comically long route around it. There's still the risk of surveillance as enemies could eavesdrop on the message. Plus the reflectors would already be sorely obvious.

On land, one could design the boxes to be heavily sound proof. You'd have to open it up (thus giving your position away, as it would distort the message.......... I think) to eavesdrop. The air can muffle the leaving message due to the differing acoustic impedance. Plus their ears aren't meant for above-water sounds.

I don't know an actual mechanism of boosting the sound. Yet. Also, I'd rather not give them any advanced instruments or electronics like today's (for story reasons). And I don't know how physically/mathematically sound this system is. No pun intended lol

TIme for a wikipedia rabbit hole.

[jal]

I'm envisioning a communication system for an aquatic, echolocating species. A network of water-filled boxes spans the continent, boosting the sound waves if necessary, before shooting it towards the next box.

Echolocation is short distance. For communication, you need much longer sound waves, so much lower frequencies. Optimal frequencies are the ones used by large whales, 30Hz and below. Much higher frequencies get distorted quickly, and will die out too soon. Of course, this is broadcast communication: anyone within the range can hear the sounds.

"Reflectors" wouldn't make sense, they could only reflect the sound to a direction it already travels, causing an echo. As for the water-filled boxes on land, apart from the problems of creating them and getting them on land, they don't make sense to me at all. Perhaps I don't understand what you mean by it, but how would such a box "boost" and "shoot" sound waves? On land, especially through air, sound travels a lot less far than in water (Elephants, also using infrasound use ground vibrations, as sound travels better through rock than air). Could you explain the physics behind it?


JAL

[chelsea]

apart from the problems of creating them and getting them on land

I do have a (partial) story justification for this (a human is helping them).

I forgot to mention that these aliens' language is at low frequencies. Echolocation signals aren't being transmitted through the boxes. Sorry I was unclear.

I'll admit that I didn't have any physical justification lol just spitballing. I originally had a much longer response written where I was improvising and refining the idea, but it was just me mutilating whale calls to act like electromagnetic waves. At the end I realized that I had initially assumed whale calls to be uni-directional. I don't know why. They're omni-directional. I also just learned about the sound channel. I think my aliens' calls can just fucking go around the continent they don't need any of this fancy shit

On one hand, this won't be a hard scifi story, but on the other hand, a land-based comm system dictates the entire plot.

Thanks for the info.


I also forgot to mention these little aquatic aliens are about dolphin-sized.

I've been thinking about how I want these aquatics to perceive art. It's very ephemeral. Transitory. Shapes in the sand that get washed away/covered/disrupted. Rock arrangements that artists are allowed to add on to and regular people can take from for tools. The way how the (intentionally organized) detritus drifts in the current. Artists set up these scenarios; you see the art around as you go about your day. Artists don't announce or present their work. It's all anonymous. In small nations, their identity can become an open secret, though. They're usually nearby because they want to hear opinions besides academic analysis. If there's not that many people, you can start to narrow it down. Permanent stuff, like carvings, is cute decoration, not to be taken seriously.

I wonder how their funerals would go. They're like whale falls on earth. First the corpse is brought to the surface. People gather in a descending cylinder/helix. The corpse is released and falls through the formation. You're expected to nudge the body toward the center (not downward) if it drifts too far to the edge. The last person, a close friend/family member, must touch it and may nudge it downward. Maybe they all sing together too. That'd sound pretty surreal I think

[Raphael]

Question: has anything like this ever existed, either in real life or in any conworld you know of?

I'm thinking about a society or community that would have a political, or maybe religious or cultural, institution which would be a kind of "council of generations". That is, it would be the rule that, let's say, one third of the council would have to be young people, one third would have to be middle-aged people, and one third would have to be elderly people.

[hwhatting]

Never heard about something like that actually existing, FWIW.

[WeepingElf]

Never heard about something like that actually existing, FWIW.

I think that something like that has been proposed, but don't remember where, when and by whom, and have no idea whether anything has come out of that proposal.

[jal]

a kind of "council of generations"

Depending on how these council members are chosen, this could easily become a life-long thing, people moving from one to the other catagory as they age.


JAL

[Raphael]

Thank you, everyone!

a kind of "council of generations"

Depending on how these council members are chosen, this could easily become a life-long thing, people moving from one to the other catagory as they age.


JAL

Good point.

[jal]

Good point.

And not to mention stuffing it with their own offspring, so it's both life-ling and hereditary. I'm pretty sure we have had some of these on Earth .


JAL

[Raphael]

Good point.

And not to mention stuffing it with their own offspring, so it's both life-ling and hereditary. I'm pretty sure we have had some of these on Earth .


JAL

That would very much not be what I have in mind, but I guess it might work out that way.

[Man in Space]

Apparently r/AskScience doesn't want to approve this question, so I'm asking here as I've not many other places to go.

The fundamental speed limit of the universe is the speed of light, c. Nothing with mass can reach or exceed this value, and only massless things can attain it. Black holes are constructs whose escape velocity is sufficiently high that nothing can escape, as you'd have to reach superluminal velocities to do so. Black holes' surface areas increase as their mass does¹ (so assuming you've a spherical black hole, the radius—and hence diameter—would too). My question is: when something is drawn into the black hole, thereby increasing its mass, does the surface area change all at once, or does it take time to propagate? If the former, doesn't that violate causality?

A use case example: Alice and Bob² are 180 degrees apart from each other, separated by a black hole; for the sake of illustration, we will say that this black hole is one light-hour in diameter. Alice has taken to announcing updates to the SCA via adding mass to the black hole, with the resultant observable changes in geometry being the tell. Bob, with his Bachelor's in linguistics, is monitoring the other side. Alice signals the SCA update with a mass dump. Had Alice used radio waves over an equivalent empty distance, it'd take Bob an hour to learn of the new SCA. Does the black hole's size change instantaneously, or does it have to wait an hour to "grow"?

----

1. We're ignoring the mechanism and effects of Hawking radiation here.
2. For the purposes of this thought experiment, assume he's been unbanned.

[bradrn]

The fundamental speed limit of the universe is the speed of light, c. Nothing with mass can reach or exceed this value, and only massless things can attain it. Black holes are constructs whose escape velocity is sufficiently high that nothing can escape, as you'd have to reach superluminal velocities to do so. Black holes' surface areas increase as their mass does¹ (so assuming you've a spherical black hole, the radius—and hence diameter—would too). My question is: when something is drawn into the black hole, thereby increasing its mass, does the surface area change all at once, or does it take time to propagate? If the former, doesn't that violate causality?

A use case example: Alice and Bob² are 180 degrees apart from each other, separated by a black hole; for the sake of illustration, we will say that this black hole is one light-hour in diameter. Alice has taken to announcing updates to the SCA via adding mass to the black hole, with the resultant observable changes in geometry being the tell. Bob, with his Bachelor's in linguistics, is monitoring the other side. Alice signals the SCA update with a mass dump. Had Alice used radio waves over an equivalent empty distance, it'd take Bob an hour to learn of the new SCA. Does the black hole's size change instantaneously, or does it have to wait an hour to "grow"?

I believe the answer to this is that the event horizon is not directly observable. However, this is really not my area of physics.

[Travis B.]

The fundamental speed limit of the universe is the speed of light, c. Nothing with mass can reach or exceed this value, and only massless things can attain it. Black holes are constructs whose escape velocity is sufficiently high that nothing can escape, as you'd have to reach superluminal velocities to do so. Black holes' surface areas increase as their mass does¹ (so assuming you've a spherical black hole, the radius—and hence diameter—would too). My question is: when something is drawn into the black hole, thereby increasing its mass, does the surface area change all at once, or does it take time to propagate? If the former, doesn't that violate causality?

A use case example: Alice and Bob² are 180 degrees apart from each other, separated by a black hole; for the sake of illustration, we will say that this black hole is one light-hour in diameter. Alice has taken to announcing updates to the SCA via adding mass to the black hole, with the resultant observable changes in geometry being the tell. Bob, with his Bachelor's in linguistics, is monitoring the other side. Alice signals the SCA update with a mass dump. Had Alice used radio waves over an equivalent empty distance, it'd take Bob an hour to learn of the new SCA. Does the black hole's size change instantaneously, or does it have to wait an hour to "grow"?

I believe the answer to this is that the event horizon is not directly observable. However, this is really not my area of physics.

Can't the event horizon be perceived through its effect upon other bodies' light?

[bradrn]

The fundamental speed limit of the universe is the speed of light, c. Nothing with mass can reach or exceed this value, and only massless things can attain it. Black holes are constructs whose escape velocity is sufficiently high that nothing can escape, as you'd have to reach superluminal velocities to do so. Black holes' surface areas increase as their mass does¹ (so assuming you've a spherical black hole, the radius—and hence diameter—would too). My question is: when something is drawn into the black hole, thereby increasing its mass, does the surface area change all at once, or does it take time to propagate? If the former, doesn't that violate causality?

A use case example: Alice and Bob² are 180 degrees apart from each other, separated by a black hole; for the sake of illustration, we will say that this black hole is one light-hour in diameter. Alice has taken to announcing updates to the SCA via adding mass to the black hole, with the resultant observable changes in geometry being the tell. Bob, with his Bachelor's in linguistics, is monitoring the other side. Alice signals the SCA update with a mass dump. Had Alice used radio waves over an equivalent empty distance, it'd take Bob an hour to learn of the new SCA. Does the black hole's size change instantaneously, or does it have to wait an hour to "grow"?

I believe the answer to this is that the event horizon is not directly observable. However, this is really not my area of physics.

Can't the event horizon be perceived through its effect upon other bodies' light?

I don’t know… as I said, not my field.

[jal]

only massless things can attain it

Note that massless things travel at light speed by definition (and necessity).


JAL

[Moose-tache]

You're all forgetting that the effect on the mass of the black hole cannot be observed from a distance instantly. Whatever Bob observes, he will observe at some delay. It will "look small" until the change reaches him. This includes gravity. Bob will feel the oomph of the black hole's increased attraction after an hour (or whatever the distance was).

[bradrn]

You're all forgetting that the effect on the mass of the black hole cannot be observed from a distance instantly. Whatever Bob observes, he will observe at some delay. It will "look small" until the change reaches him. This includes gravity. Bob will feel the oomph of the black hole's increased attraction after an hour (or whatever the distance was).

I assumed Man in Space was imagining a situation in which the observers are located immediately adjacent to opposite sides of the black hole. (Of course it’s impossible to be hover stably above the event horizon, but it’s a thought experiment…)

[Travis B.]

You're all forgetting that the effect on the mass of the black hole cannot be observed from a distance instantly. Whatever Bob observes, he will observe at some delay. It will "look small" until the change reaches him. This includes gravity. Bob will feel the oomph of the black hole's increased attraction after an hour (or whatever the distance was).

I assumed Man in Space was imagining a situation in which the observers are located immediately adjacent to opposite sides of the black hole. (Of course it’s impossible to be hover stably above the event horizon, but it’s a thought experiment…)

You can perceive the time difference by having Alice and Bob each alternately throwing matter into the black hole, which after the first matter is thrown in each one throws in matter when they perceive the event horizon as having expanded from the other having thrown in matter. Therefore, the round-trip time can be calculated by Alice or, after Alice throws in matter a second time, Bob.