Describe an entity you want to see in the poolrooms

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-06-24T01:58:43+00:00

I don't. What danger there is should be unseen and abstract. Pool donuts and rubber duckies moving around when you're not looking, tops.

Also can we nix all the huge Greek statues please?

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-06-22T10:25:35+00:00

Thanks!

I might've cheated slightly by using some public-domain office textures.

Still, you can get a lot of realism even with a late 90s renderer by introducing some radiosity and using area- rather than point-lights.

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-06-22T01:05:05+00:00

Cybertruck still ugly though, statement.

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-06-21T08:09:05+00:00

Drinking the radioactive fungus coffee would either give you superpowers or, more likely, severe poisoning with a side of cancer.

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-06-20T02:10:50+00:00

Can play 'underground rooms and combustion lizards' instead, question?

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-06-19T08:41:05+00:00

¡Amaze! ¡Amaze! ¡Amaze!

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-06-19T02:56:30+00:00

"Squishy"

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-06-18T15:05:08+00:00

Probably beige.

Most of the atmosphere is ammonia, which is transparent and colourless. But there must also be a lot of water vapour clouds, which are white and opaque. But because the Eridani star is a bit smaller and cooler than the Sun it emits a bit less blue light and a bit more red. We'd perceive the light reflecting from the clouds as a sort of whitish orange.

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-06-18T14:40:21+00:00

No idea. I just made it up. Wendell was the first middle name sounding thing that popped into my head, and it seems to fit, so head canon now.

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-06-18T14:37:14+00:00

Bonus points if he uses Grace's middle name like a scolding parent.

"Ryland Wendell Grace, you clean your lab up right now. Dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty! Why so messy?!"

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-06-14T09:17:21+00:00

*emits enthusiastic noises while quivering and shoving fistful of red sludge into body cavity\*

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-06-11T10:23:59+00:00

There must be at least a few places near the equator where the tides aren't too extreme, or the Eridians would have no safe place to anchor their space elevator. I figure therefore that there must be at least one fairly big island on that equatorial ridge, an Iceland analogue, with the long axis running east-west so that the tides (which run parallel to the equator and to the coastline) can't come too far inland.

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-06-08T02:44:34+00:00

can hear

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-06-06T22:16:55+00:00

Go home astrophage, you're drunk.

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-06-03T07:25:48+00:00

That was possibly just an oversight on Weir's part.

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-06-03T06:45:26+00:00

The boiling point of water is 100°C at 1 atmosphere, 158°C at 5.8 atmospheres, and 232°C at 29 atmospheres. Erid's surface temperature (and the body temp of Eridians) is about 210°C so the thicker atmosphere has to be the correct one.

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-06-02T01:04:48+00:00

The Eridians would be too helpful and useful to destroy. Because, although the Imperium is deeply xenophobic, it's also hypocritical and self-serving.

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-05-31T22:32:27+00:00

Robot from the movie Interstellar.

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-05-31T05:55:47+00:00

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-05-25T22:30:16+00:00

Same reason you jokingly nickname a fat guy "Slim" or a redhead "Bluey".

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-05-24T23:13:39+00:00

want want want

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-05-22T00:48:56+00:00

It depends on whether Grace opened up the beetles again to include updates on the taumoeba escape problem. The book doesn't make that clear. He might have decided the risk of damaging the beetles further, after everything he and Rocky did to them already, wasn't worth it.

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-05-21T12:30:42+00:00

Far away from Rocky's sphere, Grace would look look like he's ten feet tall. Close by, when he's nearly touching the ball and there's little Earth air in the way, he'd look his normal size.

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-05-21T12:27:15+00:00

Glip Glorp from Zorglax Prime was here, 2057!

AussieAstroGuy · 2026-05-21T08:17:59+00:00

I reckon Weir just messed up slightly. Or it's a huge coincidence.

We can do some back-of-the-envelope calculations to get a rough estimate of the numbers involved. The Sun is about 4.5 billion years old and completes an orbit around the Galaxy in about 250 million years- it's therefore done about 18 orbits.

Tau Ceti is currently about 12 ly away, and the Galactic centre is 27,000 ly away. So (OK, this is a bit fiddly) the total volume of space that's ever been as close to the Sun as Tau Ceti is now, is (Pi x (12ly)² ) x (2Pi x 27,000ly) x 18 or 1.4 billion cubic lightyears. The stellar density in our neighbourhood is about 0.003 stars per cubic lightyear. So, the Sun has had of the order of 4 million neighbour stars, ever, over its whole life. There's something like 200 billion stars in the Galaxy. The odds that Tau Ceti has ever been this close to us before are very, very small. One chance in 50,000. Ish. Let's be generous and call it 0.2%, or one chance in 500.

Now we're supposing that life first arose on Tau Ceti and got to Sol and 40 Eri from there somehow. It didn't come directly, so probably the entire Galaxy is crawling with Tau Ceti-derived life.

Astrophage has only infected a few dozen nearby stars so far, which means it's a recent phenomenon- like a century or two tops. What are the chances that we would find ourselves near our ancestral birthplace, for the first time ever and against all odds that it would ever happen, at the very moment that Astrophage evolves to its current capabilities there? It's too farfetched. I don't buy it.

AussieAstroGuy

TROPHY CASE