Lets inslave some natives..

[Columbus]

So, when you stare out towards the horizon, across the silt sea or salt flats.. does the ground curve away, or is Zalanthas flat?

[Delirium]

Can't answer you about the horizon, but as far as the silt sea goes.. you wouldn't be able to see far enough to tell. The silt storms are too bad.

[Tlaloc]

Maybe you should get a group of friends, and go out into the Salt Flats and give it a try?

[spawnloser]

Hey, we can only see three rooms (three leagues outdoors) in the best of conditions...perhaps that can be interpreted as a curve of the planet effect?

[Teleri]

I don't think so.  The planet is actually quite large, and the Known World is only a relatively small part of it, so it can't curve that much.  We can only see 3 rooms at a time, because that's how bad the visibility is.  You've almost always got some sort of dust clogging the air, or there's some high dune or rock formation blocking your further vision.  Additionally, you just can't see anything in detail so far away, as the naked eye is quite limiting.

[Miee]

Exactly what Teleri said.

Back east, if I'm up high enough, say on Big Blue, the John Hancock tower, or the Pru, I can see for miles upon miles.  On the ground, the trees and building block my view.

Here in L.A., when I can see mountains, I'm happy.  (In fact, I "discovered" a mountain the other week.)  Somedays they're clear and beautiful and others you'd never know they were there.  Why?  Because the air here sucks.

On Zalanthas you have Tek-knows how much dust in the air.  When you're outside of the city, those "rooms" are actually pretty big.  In the city, you still have the dust problem, plus the crush of bodies, plus the buildings.

[Gilvar]

Also, Zalanthas may not even be a planet, or a round one at least.

[EvilRoeSlade]

Also, Zalanthas may not even be a planet, or a round one at least.

Yeah, it could be a plane of existence that's simply a stretch of infinite wasteland.

[Miee]

Also, Zalanthas may not even be a planet, or a round one at least.

Everytime an imm posts something like that it makes me go, "Oooh."  Saying that implies that the imms know absolutely every last thing about Arm including whether or not we're all tiny people on Earth riding giant bugs and where The Dragon is.

This isn't a bad thing.  It just gets me widly speculating.

[Gorobei]

It's a discworld, and the night-plates are shorter than the gaps.  Hence the wacky night hours, and the sudden shifts from light to dark and back.

[spawnloser]

Come on, Trenidor and Miee, I was grasping at straws here.  :wink:

[Agent_137]

yea, I don't understand how you can have such a short night compared to the day and still have a sphere-ish shape that rotates.

Maybe it doesn't rotate. Maybe it just wobbles.
. . .
But then you have the whole gravity thing.

Ok. I'm done wasting thought power on this. It really doesn't make a damn.

[Bug]

Maybe Zalanthas has two suns... would explain the hot weather.

[Agent_137]

yea, but you'd NOTICE two suns, don't ya think?

Hehe.

[Jacques]

Not if it was sandwiched between a pair of identical twin stars. The actual ROTATION would take 22 hours, but because there's a "sun" on each side, a DAY would only be 11. And given peoples lack of ability to stare at the sun, it could reasonably easily go unnoticed by most. Astronomically unlikely, but theoretically possible.  :wink:

Personally? I think it's all a giant special effect, and one day someone is going to say "cut" and we'll all realize that all the world really WAS a stage.... and a flat one at that.

[Krath]

Not if it was sandwiched between a pair of identical twin stars. The actual ROTATION would take 22 hours, but because there's a "sun" on each side, a DAY would only be 11. And given peoples lack of ability to stare at the sun, it could reasonably easily go unnoticed by most. Astronomically unlikely, but theoretically possible.  :wink:

Personally? I think it's all a giant special effect, and one day someone is going to say "cut" and we'll all realize that all the world really WAS a stage.... and a flat one at that.

You need to drink some more..Everyone knows Zalanthas is a rubix cube

[flurry]

Not if it was sandwiched between a pair of identical twin stars. The actual ROTATION would take 22 hours, but because there's a "sun" on each side, a DAY would only be 11. And given peoples lack of ability to stare at the sun, it could reasonably easily go unnoticed by most. Astronomically unlikely, but theoretically possible.  :wink:

Sadly enough, this crossed my mind too after Agent_137's comment.

But if this were the case, wouldn't you have a sunrise and sunset at the same time, in opposite directions?   (Actually I guess it's more complicated than that.   But my head hurts thinking about it.)  That would be pretty cool to see.

[Reverend Jeff]

Okay, I just looked up binary star systems and weather its possible for planets to form in between them.  It's possible, according to the stuff I was looking at, but very unlikely.  I'm no expert on the subject, but people seemed to suggest that establishing a stable orbit without running into one of the stars would be very rare.  For some interesting possibilities on where it might occur, I found this link:

http://www32.brinkster.com/snefru/space/binary/internal.htm

Eh.  Of course, I guess it's possible that Armageddon takes place on a planet with a degrading orbit and that we're all gonna turn into little crispy critters soon.  At which point we'll be asked to submit special apps either to play little towers of cinder or one-celled organisms on a new planet where life is just beginning.

Hmm.  Yeah.  A world where mudsex consists of splitting in half.  Uber!

The one-celled, sultry amoeba says: "Oooh, baby.  Yeah."
The one-celled, sultry amoeba moans in ecstasy.
The one-celled, sultry amoeba splits in half, shuddering with pleasure.[/url]

[Agent_137]

*applauds jeff*


*laughs*

That's fantastic.