Jacks
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Posts posted by Jacks
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That was the original concept, yeah. Scrapped because neither Nidhiki nor Dume were involved in the 2005 storyline, nor were they even Toa at the same time, much less on the same team. It does perfectly explain why Iruini's mask is shaped like a Vahki head, though
So if we consider that the "masks shaped like other masks" thing would've been introduced to explain why Norik's Pehkui is shaped like a Kiril, it's no jump in reasoning to assume that Iruini's Kualsi is shaped like a Volitak -- we know it's not a Kualsi's standard shape, at the very least.
In fact, if memory serves, I'm pretty sure that this is what most everyone assumed until 2007 when Greg was like "
nah son it looks like Nuparu's mask"-
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Just thought I'd say, Nidhiki actually wore a Volitak in the story, so technically you don't need to paint anything for him.I can't help you, buy I'd love to know as well. I need to paint a Kauilisi silver for Nidhiki and...something white for a Ko-Toa self MOC as well.
Someone help us.
Of course Nidhiki wore a Volitak. But it's a very common headcanon that Nidhiki's Volitak was shaped the same as Iruini's Kualsi and the mask worn by Defilak, rather than the same as Nuparu Mahri's Volitak. Since the Toa Hagah's masks are specifically stated to have been shaped like masks of differing powers, and because the Toa Mahri came into being through some rather atypical transformations, there's no reason to assume that Nidhiki's Kanohi wasn't shaped like the mask we know as the Kualsi
(Greg says otherwise, of course, but he's also stated in the past that he thinks and imagines in words rather than images. If you ask me, that means we don't necesssarily have to take his word on matters of aesthetics)
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This was a wonderful little novella. I too am disappointed that we didn't get more of an explanation for the taboo against multiple-element masks, but I did like your interpretation of the Mask of Ultimate Power as a sapient entity, scheming to bring itself into existence.
I'm also really into the parallelism between Makuta saving Ekimu from the Skull Spider and Ekimu attempting to save Makuta from the MoUP in the finale
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Hot dang, this is stellar. He has even more of a "desert survivor" vibe than the official set, and I am SO into those boots. How did you manage to attach those armor shells to the Mata feet?
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Function, probably Fate. I think it as a really interesting power and I wish it could have been explored further -- imagine if it had been applied to more than just physical feats? Runners-up are Levitation and Quick Travel.
Appearance, the original Miru, Kakama, noble Ruru. Runners up are the Kiril, the Kualsi, and Lhikan's Hau, which I ish we could have gotten in more colors.
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It's amazing how a change of perspective can work wonders on your thinking, isn't it? Interestingly enough, this means that Mata Nui could lie down comfortably in one of our oceans, which expands that amount of planets he can visit.
I'm not actually sure it does. The circumference of the Earth is about 25,000 miles/40,000 km; in feet, that's 132,000,000 -- barely more than thrice the robot's canon height. So while it's possible for him to lie down, it would be on a noticeable curve. He'd also probably be unable to stand up at all under the planet's gravity, given that he's the same height as its diameter, and thus it would probably be impossible to take off without knocking the planet out of orbit.
I think I've made it pretty clear several times why the use of language here should be taken on the larger side rather than smaller. The physics subjects in Bionicle tried to be different (to an extent). The use of language generally did not, or not much, and things like the length of a year, etc.
Nah point taken. I was just being facetious there
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You could still salvage this by saying it's about relative size (the NC and SC are the largest landmasses), but still, an actual continent-sized continent is the more obvious choice.
That claim ignores the fact that continents are different sizes. What does "continent-sized" even mean? Surely you're not suggesting we impose our own ideas of scale onto the GSR's interior environment, since that's exactly what you've spent this whole thread trying to convince, me, Cressona, et al. not to do?
It would, but the image also points out that halving this thing doesn't really get it into "tame" territory. And as I've pointed out, it also creates other problems.
Well, that's fine. I'm not trying to get it into "tame" territory anymore, not now that you've shown me how SM can remain its canon size with no contradiction to storyline
Another one we haven't spent much time on is the Metru Nui suns problem. The camouflage island being smaller than expected solves that perfectly -- the suns appear close together in the dome-shaped sky (of a dome that has to fit well inside that head mind you), because they are close together. Shrink him so the sun holes have to be the pupils, and the suns should seem wider apart.
Shrinking him down doesn't mean the sunholes have to be the pupils, though. Even at half-size I was still picturing the sunholes as his tear ducts. Besides, I just like the idea of the Toa Metru flying airships out the tear ducts -- it's very Fantastic Voyage
Also because the size wasn't even decided then anyways, so why would they be worrying about having the features line up, exactly?
Correct. The concept was that the giant was a metaphor of a human with a disease who needed medicine, and the Toa/etc. analogize the particles of the medicine. The reason the giant existed was not considered. In hindsight, it does seem "implied by and unpacked from" that concept though, that there'd be some BIG reason for such a big creation, and it would be about saving lives, so motivation to actually do it. But at the time it wasn't pinned down yet.
Ok, that's a bit of a game-changer for me then. At this point I take no concrete position on the GSR's size.
I have a question... The Matoran live inside Mata Nui yes? Well while he is laying down everything seems level, no big. Yet what about when he get's up? Yeah the island of Mata Nui was destroyed but what about the internal civilizations? Did everyone's stuff just shift all in one direction(Expecting south for ref) I mean the world in question just got turned on it's side. Or do the internal Continents rotate to remain level?
Remember that the robot was designed to spend a very significant portion of its existence flying through space. That necessitates a system to produce artificial gravity for the interior, a system which the GSR has been confirmed to have.
Also wasn't there a movie or something where there was a Toa sized character named Mata Nui? I may be remembering that wrong but anyway...
You're thinking of 2009's The Legend Reborn (typically referred to around these parts as TLR). That Toa-sized character was Mata Nui.
The size of Australia is 2.97 million square miles according to Goooogle. That's approximately 15, 681.6 million square feet.
Now I'm going to go for an approximation and take the square root. That's 125.2262 million feet.
The size of our robot, 40 million feet, doesn't even come close to that size.
Therefore, I hypostulate that continent is being used as a relative term in regards to Mata Nui, Metru Nui, and Voya Nui respectively. (Unless I got the math wrong, as usual, which would be classic fishers.
)This is an excellent point. We should have been considering what the upper limits are for the size of the interior continents. As it is, you have shown there'd be no way to fit an Australia-sized continent inside the GSR even at a height of 40 million feet (I'm choosing to trust your calculations, because I haven't the motivation to try to work through them myself
), so I'm going to go ahead and assume that the NC is considerable smaller. Let's go for New Zealand-sized, maybe -
Eh... that's kind of a good point, but then Metru Nui has six regions, and it's fairly small even as an island. (Compared to Mata Nui Island anyways.) And I highly doubt every other island in the MU is all one domain, though admittedly nothing else is coming to mind offhand.
Although Metru Nui was ruled by a single Turaga, so I guess it works. But is there any evidence that the story team intended this meaning? It's clever, but I think it's much more speculative than size.
I just went back and edited that part of my post for more clarity, but I was too late
Basically, what I was thinking by "territories" was species habitats or factions. Metru Nui has six regions, yes, but it's also primarily inhabited by Matoran, and -- as you said -- ruled by a single Turaga, so here we have both a primary species and a single faction. Then you can consider islands like Xia, Zakaz, and Stelt, which each are inhabited by one primary species -- although Stelt does have some diversity, it's still primarily ruled by one specific species -- or places like Odina and Daxia, which are home to a multitude of species, but to only one faction each.
Of course, now that I check BS01 in a state of actual alertness, unlike the reply I wrote at 2am, I see I'll have to scrap that whole idea -- for some reason, I'd always assumed that the Continents were inhabited by multiple species, but it appears that they were populated only by Matoran and Rahi, along with the resident Makuta. Now I'm just wondering where I got that earlier notion
Nevertheless, I hold to what I said about size: the Southern Continent could be as small as the island of Mata Nui and still be larger than all the other landmasses inside the MU. IIRC Odina was one of the largest islands, and it's still small enough that its huge, sprawling fortress is clearly visible from above, so it'd have to be smaller by far than the aforementioned Mata Nui.
As my image showed in my first post, they do line up.
It's basically just that the sun-holes line up with the "tear duct" parts of the eyes instead of the pupils as people tend to assume (but that's only an assumption anyways).And these clues were out-story anyways, and need only give readers the clues to "a face" -- size need not be exactly part of it. This doesn't really work as evidence for size, thus. In-story, the Turaga named Ihu after Nuju's fallen mentor, for example, with no idea it was symbolic of a nose. Even had they known, they wouldn't have had a way to measure where the facial features were exactly anyways.
Yes, but if you line up Mt. Ihu with his nose and Naho Bay with the tear duct of his left eye, his mouth is still chilling off the coast, south of the point where Le-Wahi and Ta-Wahi join. I'd demonstrate but I have no skills whatsoever in image manipulation
If, however, you halve the robot's size -- as your own image suggests -- I'm pretty sure it would all line up right on the dot.And of course this means nothing in-universe -- the fact that these are out-story clues is the foundation of my argument. I'm trying to get back to what the story team was thinking while cooking this all up fifteen years ago.
I agree there's a danger of turning that into a circular argument, but I don't think it quite is, because the Reformation plotline was invented apparently around the time that the size of the giant was pinned down, and I strongly suspect it has something to do with the "enormous feel" of the size -- and the size we have was picked to make that feel.
And this topic itself (and past incarnations) is strong evidence that it succeeds at that -- if it didn't feel unimaginably vast, we wouldn't have some fans struggling with just how huge it is.
In other words, the argument shows why pushing it toward the larger options is probably better.
That's what I've been trying to do with this thread -- push for the largest possible option that does not, in my mind, contradict the intentions of the original story team. When I said the GSR could be as small as Australia, I didn't mean that I necessarily think it ought to be, at least from where I stand now. Sorry for failing to clarify that
When you say that "the Reformation plotline was invented apparently around the time that the size of the giant was pinned down," though, do you mean that the Reformation wasn't part of the original giant robot concept? Because if so, that too miiiiight force me to adjust my position again
Simple logic -- less area to cover, higher likelihood of discovery of the shape. Not really debatable.
Higher likelihood, yes. Naturally
But my thought is that the likelihood is negligible in either case -- 40 million feet or 20 million feet alike.I should've worded it in terms of negligibility, but again, it was way too late for me to be posting
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Toa Kohron, since Nidhiki is usually just described as "emerald," you could always just use the dark green Kualsi from Defilak.
If you really want it silver, though, I've found that metallic silver Sharpies are a perfect match for the silver from 2002-05 (less so for the Pearl Light Grey silver we started getting in '06). The only downside is that the marker can dry out fairly quickly, so you may need a handful at your disposal just in case, and it can rub or scratch off extremely easily; you'll need to handle the mask only by the edges when it's done, and I wouldn't recommend this for a moc that you expect to experience anything rougher than permanent display. I've also never used it to color an entire mask -- only highlights myself; were I back home with my collection, I'd show you examples, but alas -- so I can't say whether the texture will look convincing, or if it will have an obviously "markered" look.
That's all I got, I'm afraid. Sorry I can't help with the white masks
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Where my pearl gold mask of time? I'll trade ya for dat yep
Now THAT would be one doozy of a misprint!
(Pearl gold refers to the gold used from late 2005 onwards, e.g. Brutaka. Was it the 2004 flat gold Vahi you're talking about?) -
This gives me faith.I didn't need to see stats to believe this. The only proof I needed that this site is coming back was when, about half an hour ago, I hit the "Server Busy" page for the first time since before the old forums shut down
Same. It also makes me miss the snarky messages and bubble wrap .swf link we used to get on that error page back in like 2007. I wonder if we'll ever be seeing those make a return?
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Makes me wish I could still fluently understand German
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Well, not "continents" inside him, like I said.
And most of the story took place inside him, so I'd say seriously downsizing the giant does indeed have a major impact on the story. You'd think that would affect their society in some ways; having two legitimate continents versus really little islands just called that would affect a lot. Not just population size (since the MU actually has a fairly small population for the land area, but that too makes sense as a lot would be automated, there'd be plenty of wilderness areas for environmental recycling, etc.) -- for one thing, it would affect... yeah... travel times. And there being so many secrets all over the place would seem pretty odd.Well, technically, they can't properly be called "continents" as canon stands now, given that there are no tectonic plates inside the GSR (at least as far as we know
)"Continent" in the case of the MU, as I read it, seems to refer primarily to a landmass which is divided into multiple nations/species habitats/territories/, as opposed to Xia, Zakaz, or Stelt, which all have one primary species; or Odina or Daxia, which both have a diverse array of species but only one faction. The "continents" do seem to be larger than the "islands," but to assume thereupon that they must be would be to import our own definition of a "continent" (which we already know does not necessarily apply; again, tectonic plates).
The Southern Continent could probably be made as small as the island of Mata Nui in area with hardly any change to the story.
Er, as I said at the start, if slightly smaller is all you want, why bother? A giant only slightly less unimaginably vast is still unimaginably vast. Don't you mean continents that aren't really continents anymore?
More to the point, this actually works against your argument as I see it. You're saying the benefit to your way is the continents are smaller; the downside is we don't get to use our brains and imaginations to try to solve a puzzle and we have to have a more "run of the mill" universe.A robot 18-20 million feet tall is also still incredibly vast
It's just easier to reconcile it with the size of everything else.Honestly, you might have been able to convince me of the 40 million feet thing if it weren't for the point that SPIRIT raised about the geographical names on the island of Mata Nui -- why would the story team have named a mountain "nose," a volcano "mouth," etc., if the GSR's facial features were not meant to line up directly beneath them?
This has, however, convinced me that the "Mata Nui Rising" video is indeed in error re:face placement, though. If you line the GSR's face up with the two mountains, it puts the island on a slight diagonal. This, I suppose, would open up the possibility of a larger robot. I, sadly, have neither the time at the moment, nor the mathematical skills at any moment, to form a new estimate on this basis.
If somebody can visualize this and it proves the robot's larger size, I'd jump ship on my own thread and side with bones on this
EDIT: Just from eyeballing the image you linked in your first reply, it doesn't look to me like the face of the 40 million foot tall GSR would fit even on the diagonal. However, I'd forgotten that you stated in the image that halving the robot's height would be acceptable. Given that I accepted 20 million feet as a sensible height over a dozen posts ago, I'm not entirely sure what we're debating now xD
Actually, it seems like the Entity sort of inhabits EP, and does not control the results of transformations. If memory serves...
yknow I'm pretty sure you're right, my bad. Your memory does serve.
Whoa there. Australia is the smallest continent. It's so easy to type the words "no change to the story", but so difficult for it to be TRUE, yanno?
Not that difficult, if you ask me -- see previous comments on what "continent" entails, etc.
Well let's think about this for a second, what defines our concepts of these times? A Year is the time it takes for a planet to make a single rotation around its home star. This has nothing to do with planet size so much as orbit size and speed. A massive planet could just as easily have a very short year vs a smaller planet with a very long one. It is very possible that while I do not know personally Greg's knowledge on the mechanics of galactic travel he had some concept of this and thus knew that Spherus Magna could and does have years equivalent to our own. What you should be asking is by what reference of time is Greg using to calculate this year?
I briefly addressed this very point in post #42
The biggest problem with shrinking the giant is the amount of power required to reform this giant planet - if it's too small, not enough power.
This argument seems circular to me, since the original estimates of the planets' sizes were based on images of the robot/s on/with the planets. So to say "The GSR must be x size in order to reform the y size planet" gets us nowhere, because the planet is only assumed to be y size based on the pre-existing idea that the robot is x size. If the planet is bigger, the bot's gotta be bigger. If the planet is smaller, the bot can be smaller. It's common sense but it doesn't really prove anything new :\
Another problem is if the bot is too small, someone could travel the whole thing in ten minutes (or a lifetime), make a map, and say "This looks like a giant Toa!"
(Of course, that's possible anyway, but unlikely as most Matoran would stay in one place doing their jobs, but still. There's always one Takua in the group, and if the bot's small, easier to figure out the big secret.)
Dangerous giant Rahi in the legs would make travel down that way pretty difficult except for extremely powerful entities such as BoM or OoMN members -- who already know about the GSR -- or Vortixx et al., who as far as I can imagine would not care since their immediate profits are more important. Travel to the arms would be fairly difficult for Matoran as well, given that the arms tend to be the habitat for the aforementioned powerful entities IIRC. Given that, I'm not sure it's any more likely in a less-massive robot than a supermassive robot
And like I said above, 18-20 million feet is still incredibly massive.My motivation, ultimately, is for Spherus Magna to be a sensible size instead of a super-planet, and that's because I think it's a more interesting story if it's more relatable to its audience, even if only in a minor way-- and that minor way is being in a similar universe with similar cosmological constraints with a background setting (in this case the planet) that operates, apart from those interesting changes relevant to the story, similar to the way our own planet operates. Maybe it's just a difference in taste, but I'd rather not have to postulate all sorts of additional, unmentioned goings-on in order to fit a massive Spherus Magna into a universe with otherwise ordinary laws of physics.
I mean, of course it's fun to figure out, but I think it's also interesting to figure out the reverse puzzle-- how close can we make the Bionicle world to our own, and how close can we make it stick to our intuition of how it ought to be? Ultimately I suppose I just don't like the picture of Mata Nui standing next to earth, or wrapping himself head-to-toe around the planet when he sits down on it, and I want to get closer to the image I have of a giant robot standing up on a relatively earth-sized planet, and I just see the 40 million number thrown out there without any real, necessary story purpose (because, as I said, he doesn't have to be as huge for us to have things we can call "continents" in his chest, or for there to be large oceans and landmasses requiring significant travel time) as an obstacle to that.
Basically this
TBH though at this point I'm enjoying the task of disentangling this puzzle, no matter what the final conclusion ends up being
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4/5. Vocals are good but it's a little bit bland and long. I zoned out while listening and nothing about the song recaotured my attention, but it was pleasant overall
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I didn't need to see stats to believe this. The only proof I needed that this site is coming back was when, about half an hour ago, I hit the "Server Busy" page for the first time since before the old forums shut down
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This is all I wanted from that song. Sucks that I had to wait seven years for it, but I'm just glad that it's finally here
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I really wanted hate this just so I could continue the epic streak of dissatisfaction, and I wasn't a big fan of the opening movement, but I was so down with the texture they wove in the instrumental section from like 2:30 to 4:45 that by the time the vocals came back, I was into it
and the fact that they then followed it up with another instrumental movement totally won me over. Against all my expectations, I have to give this a 6/5. That was a freaking symphony. I'm still recovering. Holy cow.EDIT: it even made me forget to post a new song!!
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I wanna say SM years would still be equivalent to our years, because having two differing timescales to work with would get taxing. But then we have to decide what we mean by "equivalent:" is one SM year is 365 36-hour days, or ~243 36-hour days (approximately equal to 365 24-hour days*)?
EDIT: And here's another important question: how do we even know their hours are equivalent to ours?
*fun fact: I've used the calculator on my phone more in the past two days than the entire three years I've had the device already
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Ah, fair, but for the EP to transform the rock of a planet so that the rock nullifies gravity... well, it'd have to somehow be the destiny of the rock, or EP would have to do so deliberately, and there'd need to be a planet-creation process in which the planet starts out at a reasonable, gravitationally-allowable size, and somehow grows as the EP in its core starts to imbibe the closest level of rock with that power.... so it would be very strange to imagine Spherus Magna actually coming into existence in the first place.
Well, given that EP is a living entity, I just figure it can do whatever it wants. If it wants to grow its planet to an absurdly large size, I see no reason it couldn't.
Definitely not an assumption of mine that the robots were battling on a reasonable level plane, though... I mean look at the images, check out all the story material we've got and there's every indication that they are not carefully balancing on an oversized beach ball. If that artwork isn't relatively canon, what is?
Well they're not balancing on a beach ball, but there's no reason to assume the curve of the planet isn't noticeable for them.
Also not at all clear on what aspects of the story are fundamental to the 40 million feet number? We can still have a tremendously huge Great Spirit Robot that isn't so tremendously huge that it'd have to wrap itself completely around the earth to sit down on it, and every element of the story would still make perfect sense. We get reasonably-sized planets, don't need to postulate extra weird stuff for EP to do, and don't need to figure out how such massive planets came to be through some weird combination of existing astrophysics and a convoluted involvement of EP. Whereas, if you were to ignore the 40 million feet number, what elements of canon exactly would be warped? Ah, the continents might be slightly smaller? The island of Mata Nui would be... well, exactly the same size, we could just fit more of the giant's face under it?
This precisely. Like I said earlier, the MU could fit into an Australia-sized robot with no change to the story.
Greg has been fairly adamant about 1year being '1 year'. So as to avoid questions about the length of a year
It is believed that an SM day is 36 hours, based on the sun diel from 01. Whether this means SM days are longer or hours are shorter remains a mystery. I attempted to ask Greg once on the lego message boards but he brushed it off saying he made a year equal a year to avoid questions about the length if a year. Now I think about it, I presume he ment time in general.
I'd forgotten about the sundial thing, thanks for jogging my memory. So I guess that could settle the question of years...except that Greg is also the one who gave us the "40 million feet tall" thing, and here we are in a thread that attempts to disregard that entirely
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Uh, no. The Prototype Robot was said to be something like 2/3 the size of the GSR. That would make it just over 5000 miles tall. Might want to check your sources first.I mean, I'd always assumed that the prototype "exploding" essentially meant "fell over and broke into pieces," since a literal explosion that large would probably have launched parts into space and done significantly more damage to the planet.
I'll assume for a minute that the GSR really is 40 million feet/7600 miles tall, so let's say the prototype is an even 7000 miles, with similar proportions. Its head would then be almost 600 miles. Unless the parts of the robot barely moved when they broke off, that head is probably at least several hundred miles away from the nearest other part. Likewise for the rest. So that's still multiple days by steed, and that's only from one robot part to another -- the city won't necessarily be at the corner of the giant arm nearest to you.
I was basing my guess off their depiction in the comics, wherein the GSR appeared to me to be about head-and0shoulders above the prototype. If, in canon, the GSR is 7575 miles tall with a head:body ratio of 1:12, its head is 631 miles, and thus it would be a little over 631 miles taller than the prototype. I was not aware that the height of the latter had been confirmed; if it happened in-story, I must have forgotten in the intervening years, as numbers do not stick in my head the same way images do.
But regardless of whether it's 5000 miles or 7000 miles, my points still stands
Here's a question, though. When we talk months or years, we mean our time. But how long would the day and year be on a spherus magna planet? If the planet is larger, the days could be much longer, and ditto for the year.
I recall hearing a headcanon that a "year" in Bionicle could be equivalent to a month for us -- so Mata Nui's 100,000 year mission would have been about 8.3 thousand years of our time.
I'm not sure how I feel about years in Bionicle being longer, though. The near-astronomical timespans we have are already hard enough for me to wrap my head around
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I mean, I'd always assumed that the prototype "exploding" essentially meant "fell over and broke into pieces," since a literal explosion that large would probably have launched parts into space and done significantly more damage to the planet.
I'll assume for a minute that the GSR really is 40 million feet/7600 miles tall, so let's say the prototype is an even 7000 miles, with similar proportions. Its head would then be almost 600 miles. Unless the parts of the robot barely moved when they broke off, that head is probably at least several hundred miles away from the nearest other part. Likewise for the rest. So that's still multiple days by steed, and that's only from one robot part to another -- the city won't necessarily be at the corner of the giant arm nearest to you.
So I was exaggerating when I said months, as a result of not thinking through my estimates. That's still big enough I think it would have merited a mention
I'm perfectly willing to accept the planet size based on those figures, though, but I think I'm still sticking to 18 million feet for the GSR height, mostly based on the geographical naming choices that SPIRIT pointed out earlier.
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I incorporated this in Part 1 of my retelling (first 10 chapters taking place before and during Core War), with some journeys taking multiple years. If you think about it, this isn't a problem -- it's an awesome concept, of a world that even with tech like ours (roughly, for vehicles, probably), journeys could take comparable amounts of time to pre-vehicle cross-continental travel on Earth.
Stories about journeys that take so much time can be fun.And that's why I actually found the scale of the planet and the robot believable in your retelling (ten years to get from the Ice Tribe capital back to the Great Beings' tower? or was it less? idr). Sadly, the '09 story did not do that. If it had, I would have had no cause to make this thread in the first place
For the 2009-10 storyline, one simple fact makes the short travel times work -- after the Shattering, the Agori made their villages near the pieces of the fallen prototype giant.
That means the 2009 villages likely are a (comparably) short distance from each other.
I mean, comparatively, yes, but the prototype was still thousands of miles tall, and given how far apart some of the parts were scattered, it should take a journey of multiple months at least to get between some of them. The '09 storyline seemed to take place over a matter of weeks. Heck, there was nothing in TLR to suggest that the film's events didn't take place in a matter of days. There was precious little indication of time passing.
The canon didn't really make this clear, but since the official Bara Magna map doesn't give scale in relation to the northern and southern polar craters, the region shown on the map could be any relative size to Bara Magna, so it works whether it's Jupiter-sized or just three times the size of Earth or something. And since resources became much more scarce with the loss of the heavily forested northern region and the ocean to the south (likely dramatically affecting the water cycle of Bara Magna), it makes sense they would congregate around something like these pieces, which served as shelters, and the smaller forest of Tesara, etc.
We can at least estimate the area based on the size of the prototype robot and its scattered parts.
Yeah, and since this started out by taking the art as definite, it ends up being self-contradictory, because at least one image from the MNS shows the moons fitting in their craters. Plus the kind of rapid density collapse you'd need to get the moons working would probably kill the Bota Magna inhabitants.But wouldn't that mean that Aqua Magna and Bota Magna were structurally more stable as moons than as part of Spherus Magna, being so dense on their own?
Furthermore, if the gravity is the same on Bara Magna, Aqua Magna, and Bota Magna for reasons related to density rather than EP, wouldn't there be a significant increase in gravity when all three merge?
All of this is more of why I think the best solution was the simplest one -- any gravity over a certain level is absorbed/cancelled. Explains all of these things in one sweep, and doesn't even require any modification to physics itself -- just a power (of gravity nulling), which isn't weird for Bionicle at all.
I absolutely agree, which is why I had to raise those questions in the first place
The thing is, however you want to leave planet sizes up to interpretation, we've still got some facts about a giant robot fight that took place with both robots standing on the surface of the planet, in which it's pretty clear that they're on a fairly level plane relative to their sizes and not balancing on opposite sizes of an exercise ball.
Gravity-nullification of some kind might be the only way to save the massive planet sizes we need once we accept the 40 million number-- although turning Spherus Magna into a supermassive chunk of rock held to together with EP is, at least for me personally, less attractive than just accepting that the GSR isn't as tall as the earth is around; I'd rather the entire story not take place in a setting that's on such a hyper-inflated scale , and I'd be more comfortable ignoring one number than trying to warp everything in order to fit the number.
I'm right on board with that last bit. Honestly, I'm pretty sure you could fit the MU into a robot as tall as the width of Australia. Then SM would only need to be like 2-4 times Earth-size, at least. I always figured the robots were probably big enough to just see the planet's curve, but not so big for it to affect their footing or anything like that. Somebody feel free to check the math on my random estimates
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Well, 200% from my mistake, and however much more depending on what we determine Mata Nui's true size to be. So yes, I definitely overestimated it.Looking back at my calculations in the other topic here, I realize now that the number I used for Mata Nui's height was incorrect. I couldn't find the information on BS01 and so used the number I remembered hearing in 2008 (80 million feet), but apparently my memory failed me.
I can redo the calculations using the new information (or someone else can if they're really eager, since the procedure is all laid out in the post). First though, I'm going to try finding a more accurate number for the radio of head size to body size. That shouldn't be difficult with all the canon art we've got.
-Letagi
So wait, are you saying we've been overestimating the size of Spherus Magna by like 500%?
200% if we assume the GSR is 40 million feet tall, but if it is only 18-20 million feet tall (as I have come to conclude based on bones pointing out that its head:body ratio is 1:12 rather than 1:10), that's still 1/4 of your original figure of 80 million. So most likely around 400%
I've been thinking about the problem of having solid planets with huge radii. Since matter becomes more condensed closer to the core of a planet, at some point, the core reaches critical density and collapses into a black hole. We'd need a really big planet for that to happen, and I'd have to do some calculations to see whether we're anywhere near that point with the numbers I found for Spherus Magna, but I wouldn't be too surprised. Of course, first we have to find a reasonable height for Mata Nui and then I have to revise those numbers, because I started off with an incorrect value.
First, we don't know how big it is, only that it's larger than Earth (recently confirmed by Greg), and does officially have more gravity. This issue (plus animation portrayals) is why I theorized a long time ago that something about the megaplanets' cores made them absorb any gravitons over a certain level (about Earth level), probably as a result of transformation by contact with the energized protodermis cores. This would 1) make sense, 2) be freaky awesomesauce, and 3) make gravity on Aqua Magna the same as Spherus Magna, despite it being much smaller (so animation portrayals as everything being Earth gravity work), and 4) mean the megaplanets could be truly mega, having gobs of real estate for future population growth.What bothers me most about the 40 million feet number is how large Aqua Magna, Spherus Magna, et al. would have to be. Can you even have a solid planet with a radius 70x that of Jupiter?
Unfortunately, somebody tried to ask Greg about this, did a bad job, and he "canonized a no" to any kind of gravity leveling effect (in giving the answer mentioned above). So, we're left to assume many images are artistic license and that we don't have any actual way to estimate the size. (Fan attempts notwithstanding.
) Or, ignore that one answer and go with my theory anyways, or something like it. Also, we actually don't need any sort of gravity corrections or cancelling effects to equalize the gravity on all three planets. As long as there's a careful balance maintained between mass and radius, gravity will stay the same, despite the smaller size. It's all about the ratios. The numbers I found maintained the proper ratios for gravity on SM, AM and BotaM, but the densities turned out to be too small. There's a chance, though, that with a smaller value for Mata Nui's height, the densities will work out.
But wouldn't that mean that Aqua Magna and Bota Magna were structurally more stable as moons than as part of Spherus Magna, being so dense on their own?
Furthermore, if the gravity is the same on Bara Magna, Aqua Magna, and Bota Magna for reasons related to density rather than EP, wouldn't there be a significant increase in gravity when all three merge?
And if Bara Magna was only as dense as moons less than 25% its size, would it even have enough gravity to hold itself together?
To be fair, I'm no physicist, so there's probably some perfectly reasonable explanation I'm overlooking, but I don't think we can really make it work without the EP being a factor.
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It has certainly awoken the building urges of my inner child. I currently have two full-fledged designs beating against the inside of my skull, and multiple others in formation, and I'm still away from my collection for a few weeks. Poring over my mock-ups in LDD cannot sustain me much longer. And then after only a week I'll be back to this MOCless wasteland
(I haven't really built anything since 2012, except for ten Vahki last summer, and that was only because I was bored
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BIONICLE In Under Two Minutes
in Fan Created Media
Posted · Edited by Junkbot Master of Trash
It totally was. I remember seeing it in its original 01-08 format. Totally forgot that it was you who made it, though
and it's still just as funny seven years later
I have the mask! Mata Nui is dead! Mata Nui is alive! I am dead!