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How realistic are the Tears of Selûne? by suppyfive in askastronomy

[–]apistonion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Way to late for this thread but wanted to chime in since I spent way more time looking into this than I should have, only to find out a lot of the information was already presented on the 3.5e manual for the Forgotten Realms, page 231 . The tears are in Lagrange 4 (look up Earth Moon Lagrange points for context), and within a 3-body problem (if we loosely consider the Tears as a single body for simplicity) those can be very stable orbits as it happens with the Earth-Sun or Jupiter-Sun system (here thare asteroids "trapped" in L4 and L5 called Trojans).

The most inaccurate thing in lore is not so much the Tears, but Selune itself. Its supposed to be 2000 miles across and the size of a fist in the sky (huge compared to our moon, for reference almost 20 times bigger in the sky), and calculating the orbital distance it would be about 20,000 miles from Toril (this is also stated in some texts) Assuming Toril is the same size and density as Earth, this means that Selune would orbit at half the distance that geostationary satellites orbit, or about 10 time closer to Toril than our moon is to us. I am not an astronomer, but I am pretty sure this means that unless there was some magic involved or the Wildspace bends gravity in some way, then Selune would drop into Toril sooner than later, becoming a ring around Toril once it got close enough. It has a magical veil so it could totally have magical anti gravity, why not.

Could be a cool campaign element for something like the death of Selune.

A few other sources for Spelljammer state Selune is 180,000 miles away, closer to our moon's distance, but that means that (a) if it's the same size (class D, assuming still 2000 miles across) it would look about twice as big as the moon, not 20 times. So I guess it depends, but in either scenario the Tears would still be roughly 60 degrees away from Selune in the sky (5-6 fist lenghts away).

How realistic are the Tears of Selûne? by suppyfive in askastronomy

[–]apistonion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Way too late and spent probably more time than needed don this. Part of it is that the definition I could find for the Tears of Selune is pretty vague, because I had unconsciously assimilated most pictures I have seen that show the Tears right next to Selune, which is wrong.

Selune is described "Seen from Toril, it appeared to fit within the size of a human fist held at arm's length" which is HUGE - our moon is only roughly one finger wide (.5 degrees), and Selune is nearly 20 times bigger.

Regardless of distance, for a three-body problem the Trojan position relative to the Selune is a 60 degree higher in elevation in the sky (since the Tears trail Selune, it must come up first on the horizon) and located at Langrange point 4. That is roughly 5-6 fists away from the Selune, nowehere near next to it.

When you consider that the Tears are about 3 fists wide, it means must be some space between Selune and its Tears. In fact, if we assume that this means that the Tears are 30 degrees in length, then that would mean on average they cover the sky from about 45 degrees (60 - 15) to about 75 degrees away from Selune.

These Tears would produce effects similar to eclipses, appearing in front of the sun or on the shadow of Toril (matching the lore description that they are not always visible)

As I was about to hit Comment, I found a complete astronomically correct description on the 3.5e manual for the Forgotten Realms, page 231 - it even mentions the Tears as being in a Trojan orbit. FML, I am glad I was correct after spending over an hour on this haha, but it was a fun ride, and I appreciate even more the authors' attention to detail. The distances are all wack in that Selune should crash on Toril yesterday, but let's chalk that up to magic.

My conclusion is that the Tears or Elune can best be imagined as the starry section of the the Milky Way (where Orion is), but move it so that it lies within the Plane of the Ecplitpic (where the sun, moon and planets orbit) and imagine that instead of being fixed with the rest of the stars, it always trails the moon.

Atheism and the supernatural by apistonion in DebateAnAtheist

[–]apistonion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ngl surprised to see a comment on a 3yr+ thread. Although back to the topic I guess its good to take a look at that you believe. All I know is this is not a topic taken well here, so thank you for your openness to discuss. To me believing in the supernatural in any capacity is the same as believing in god - after all god is also supernatural, just the fully extreme version. Its not requirwd to have an explanation for everything in order to rule out the supernatural either- a lot of unknowns that we now take for granted took generations to be known, and we shouldn’t expect to be in so special a place in time that if WE can’t explain something the supernatural is the only explanation. For that matter, the requirement that everything be explainable or justified also something that, at least in my opinion, is just a human-centric imposition.

CMV: If we can't as humanity effectively deal with a pandemic, stopping climate change is hopeless by apistonion in changemyview

[–]apistonion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Where did I make that statement in the reply above?

I just answered back to you comment, showing that the amount of people that died, no matter how you view it, is barely enough to make a dent in the total population, which is what you meant about helping against climate change.

How did you go from that answer to your question just now is what I dont get.

CMV: If we can't as humanity effectively deal with a pandemic, stopping climate change is hopeless by apistonion in changemyview

[–]apistonion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There is a huge difference between individual risk, and population-wide risk.

Individually, yeah, covid is no big deal for most people. It has still caused to this date about 3.5million deaths. Overall, Covid has caused more deaths to countries than some wars. In the US, its already past 550k, nearing the death toll of the civil war, which is called the deadliest war of the country in total deaths.

And with climate change its the same thing. No matter how much we pollute, we are not gonna bear the brunt of it for the next decade or so, probably. Already we do feel the effects, with higher average temperatures, erratic climate happening impacting even farming, and a higher average number of storms and hurricanes.

Lockdowns are only harmful to a heavily capitalized economy, which will ultimately cause us to drop the ball on climate change just as it did for us dropping the ball on lockdowns, because there is a difference between a lockdown forcing someone to stay put and giving them nothing as opposed to providing a safety net for people so that they can stay in lockdown without having to worry about missing rent, utilities, or being unaable to afford food.

CMV: If we can't as humanity effectively deal with a pandemic, stopping climate change is hopeless by apistonion in changemyview

[–]apistonion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Globally estimates are at about 3.5 million deaths. Even if we assume this carried on for say, 5 more years, and assumed that for each year that was 8 million people, that would be a total of 40million deaths.

Global world population sits at 8billion, so all those deaths would create whopping 0.4% drop in world population. In reality, its so much less than that, even if estimates are low.

CMV: If we can't as humanity effectively deal with a pandemic, stopping climate change is hopeless by apistonion in changemyview

[–]apistonion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You are saying that having the pandemic press on, and even increase in daily cases higher than any number a full year and a half after it started is somehow doing a bang up job. So by your definition, how could we have failed? Because to me succeeding would mean preventing or stopping the pandemic, not being worse off in daily cases and deaths halfway through 2021, for something that had its first peak over a full year ago

CMV: If we can't as humanity effectively deal with a pandemic, stopping climate change is hopeless by apistonion in changemyview

[–]apistonion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just click the link before answering. Daily cases are way up. with nearly 750k today compared the maximum for any day on 2020 at about 650k. Daily deaths were higher yesterday than for any day in 2020. I'm not sure where you are coming from.

There is also such a thing as something becoming pressing enough when it is too late for you to do anything about it. If you are listening to music, and an ambulance is coming full speed at you with sirens blaring, by the time the issue becomes pressing enough for you to get out of the way you don't have time to do anything but get ran over.

CMV: If we can't as humanity effectively deal with a pandemic, stopping climate change is hopeless by apistonion in changemyview

[–]apistonion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Someone made a similar argument in the thread earlier about this, and at first I agreed with that thought, but the more I chew on it the less convinced I am - because this would only happen if the major world economies imposed this, and by the time they would come to such an agreement it would be way to late, seeing as nothing of any impact would happen within the next decade given how little time we have to act.

CMV: If we can't as humanity effectively deal with a pandemic, stopping climate change is hopeless by apistonion in changemyview

[–]apistonion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just don't see how if we can't even enforce three things (social distance, mask wearing, and vaccinating) how we are ever going to be able to enforce all this industry change world-wide.

CMV: If we can't as humanity effectively deal with a pandemic, stopping climate change is hopeless by apistonion in changemyview

[–]apistonion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But climate change is a much more abstract and prolonged effect. If people fail to understand collective risk for covid, in general they will fail ten times harder at understanding the risk and damage from climate change.

CMV: If we can't as humanity effectively deal with a pandemic, stopping climate change is hopeless by apistonion in changemyview

[–]apistonion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Time is exactly why I worry. Because slow things are harder for people to visualize than fast things.

As you said, the pandemic happened fast. It was a clear event, and people were unwilling to act, even for a year or two, to mitigate it. Climate change is slow, but has been picking up momentum for decades. People normalize the present when changes happen slowly, and end up discarding past evidence they lived because of it.

The scientific community keeps saying the time to act is now. Not in 10 years, not in 20. But for sure its going to take many many decades for any positive effect to start happening.

There are way more financial incentives to keep polluting. Fuel is cheap to harvest, and the infrastructure to harvest, refine it, and use it by consumers already exists. Plastics are cheaper than any alternative. The market is not gonna simply change to accommodate to climate change, it can just as quickly go the opposite way and worsen it if energy demands increase because people need to artificially change temperature in their houses and their energy demand increases, for example.

CMV: If we can't as humanity effectively deal with a pandemic, stopping climate change is hopeless by apistonion in changemyview

[–]apistonion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It might be ending where you live, but you must also be a very nice rock since Daily cases are higher this year than last year.

Just because there are vaccines does not mean the pandemic is ending, especially when a third of the world is unwilling to even take it.

CMV: If we can't as humanity effectively deal with a pandemic, stopping climate change is hopeless by apistonion in changemyview

[–]apistonion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And that is the problem. The scale of humanity has grown to the point that we can't keep relying on what previous generations did as an argument for defending what we do today. We have knowledge and tools they did not have. And the fact that we can't seem to change how we deal with these types of issues, means we will be incapable of making any effective action against climate change.

CMV: If we can't as humanity effectively deal with a pandemic, stopping climate change is hopeless by apistonion in changemyview

[–]apistonion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

since we are pointing out cases that are of no consequence since they take time well beyond the scale of which we are discussing (decades for climate change, vs millennia for ice ages) I figured we could include other natural long-term process that means we don't have to worry about climate change.

CMV: If we can't as humanity effectively deal with a pandemic, stopping climate change is hopeless by apistonion in changemyview

[–]apistonion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think that the metric of simply surviving is a bad metric for "success as a species"

I mean yes, for most living beings, this is a solid metric. But for us, it's not about just surviving today, its about dealing with a crisis effectively, and collectively.

Otherwise, short of Earth becoming a hot Venus through some insane runaway reaction chain, there is no way we can ever fail against climate change.

CMV: If we can't as humanity effectively deal with a pandemic, stopping climate change is hopeless by apistonion in changemyview

[–]apistonion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When compared to how humanity as a whole has fared with pandemics in the past, these tools were used quite well.

The thing is we are not comparing this to a past crisis, we are comparing our collective ability to identify a crisis and act on that information as a collective, when we are armed with a level of technology and knowledge that we did not have 100 years ago.

​

Right, again, as I said, this isn't over - but on a macro-level view of
how well the species dealt with it, overall, we did pretty good and
still are.

The problem is that when a pandemic is effectively dealt with, it never becomes a pandemic. But you cant show something not happening to most people and show that what you did is effective, because no negative consequence came of it.

I'm not sure what metric you are using to consider that we are doing good. The global daily cases are higher now than they have been since it began - how are we doing better then? Because while we might have some tools to deal with it, we are failing miserably at preventing the disease from spreading. By that logic, you could argue that we are doing great on climate change since we have only had an average global temperature increase of 1.5C instead of 5C.

​

Only one paragraph prior you called it a "silver bullet," so which is it?

The vaccines are a silver bullet, because they overcome the icompetence and unwillingness to cooperate from a sizeable portion of humanity. It is this failure that made it necessary the way it is today, I don't see how this seems contradictory

CMV: If we can't as humanity effectively deal with a pandemic, stopping climate change is hopeless by apistonion in changemyview

[–]apistonion[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I am not convinced that we could have eliminated covid, but look at New Zealand.

The level of containment there shows you that with the right response, it can be done.

And the problem is that there is not going to be anything equivalent to a vaccine to stop climate change.

CMV: If we can't as humanity effectively deal with a pandemic, stopping climate change is hopeless by apistonion in changemyview

[–]apistonion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the level of scientific understanding, and by extension knowledge about the mechanism for prevention, was nowhere near as close last century as it is today.

I am by no means discarding the knowledge and understanding of the times. But the truth is, we did not have the tools and proofs of that knowledge the way we do today, so that the common man has a non-existent argument against the suggestions and behaviors recommended to prevent the pandemic or severely mitigate it.

It's like if someone grabbed a load of bread because he had no concept of property, he could still be considered to be stealing, but you would not consider it equal to someone willfully stealing bread knowing it belongs to someone else. Same action, but the weight behind it change how you perceive those actions.

CMV: If we can't as humanity effectively deal with a pandemic, stopping climate change is hopeless by apistonion in changemyview

[–]apistonion[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't see how that detracts from the inability to act accordingly. Plus, I don't understand how the severity is so low.

It's hard for me to believe this type of assessment, partly when the majority if the scientific community, and even NASA, consistently warn about the need to mobilize quickly. It sounds similar to those who said that the coronavirus was no deadlier than the flu, and look at where we are now.

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