Jacks

This gives me faith. 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?

Makes me wish I could still fluently understand German 4/5 for inducing linguistic nostalgia

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. 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 yknow I'm pretty sure you're right, my bad. Your memory does serve. Not that difficult, if you ask me -- see previous comments on what "continent" entails, etc. I briefly addressed this very point in post #42 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 :\ 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. 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

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

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

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

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!!

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

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. 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. This precisely. Like I said earlier, the MU could fit into an Australia-sized robot with no change to the story. 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

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 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 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

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.

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 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. 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. 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 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

I don't remember that, but I do remember that when we found out that 2009 would have only one character returning from previous years, there were dozens of theories about how Matoro was gonna get reincarnated on Bara Magna somehow.

So wait, are you saying we've been overestimating the size of Spherus Magna by like 500%? 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. 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% 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. 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. 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. 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.

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 )

Yeah, the giant robot thing was, in fact, the concept which sparked the entire line in the first place. It's been confirmed multiple times. Kapura'd

^Exactly, and now I'm starting to recall in-story instances of the 40 million measurement, but I'm pretty sure they didn't start until after Greg confirmed the height as 40 million feet here; knowing Greg, it's probably just an impressive-sounding number he chose at random. And remember that Greg was not part of the story team in 2001

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. 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. See, the physics are fine with me -- I can totally buy the EP-graviton thing. The issue I have with the planet's size is the fact that travel was not an insurmountable obstacle. Based on the level of tech we saw in '09 -- animal mounts and crumbling motor vehicles that probably couldn't break 60mph -- it should have taken decades to get anywhere, if the planet is indeed the size of Jupiter. So really, this thread isn't actually about reducing the size of the GSR -- it's about reducing the size of Spherus Magna itself, given that the planet's size has been estimated based on the size of the robots. Thanks for dragging that out of me See, I'm inclined to believe that this means that the size of the island of Mata Nui is the more accurate figure, given that we got the island's dimensions in official story materials in 2001, whereas the 40 million thing was more of an off-the-cuff behind-the-scenes tidbit that got thrown randomly at us. I don't think you read that right. They had the whole of the robot figured out back when the line first began, meaning that the island's dimensions would have followed after. The dimensions for the island, if you recall, came from a page in the magazine. The GSR was described multiple times in-story as being 40 million feet tall. So, if 40 million was figured out at the beginning of the line, and was still used later on, then that's all the more reason to accept that as an answer, because that's the measurement that has lasted longer and had far more significance. I'm not sure why you say that the 40 million feet has been around longer -- if you're right, then both measurements have been around since the beginning. Which takes us right back to square one in terms of conflicting measurements.

Oh, I trust the accuracy of your calculations -- but I'm assuming that you were working off the assumption that the GSR was 40 million feet tall? If so, that's why they'd need recalculating. See, I'm inclined to believe that this means that the size of the island of Mata Nui is the more accurate figure, given that we got the island's dimensions in official story materials in 2001, whereas the 40 million thing was more of an off-the-cuff behind-the-scenes tidbit that got thrown randomly at us. So wait, are you saying we've been overestimating the size of Spherus Magna by like 500%? I always disliked how large Mata Nui was described as being, and I always ignored that and made him the height of North America; now lo and behold, as my dislike was subconsciously justified, thanks mathematics!. Now, by North America, do you also include Greenland and Central America? It's a rough distance from the bottom of Central America to the top of Canada. (Check out this site for a visual representation) It's also like 100 or so miles more than than the width of the continental U.S., from the east coast to California (sorry to be America-centric here, that's just the reference that makes the most sense to me )

Mount Everest is about three miles high IIRC. This would make Mata Nui slightly taller than the continental U.S. is wide (as opposed to the same height as the diameter of the Earth)

No, they wouldn't. The Red Star can't revive beings whose bodies have been destroyed.

So, after a post I made in a thread discussing the size of the Red Star, I got to thinking about the actual size of the Great Spirit Robot. I always thought that 40 million feet seemed excessive for the height, and I've just realized I may have been right. Here's my train of thought: 1. BS01 confirms the Island of Mata Nui to be 303.91 miles from north to south. Mata Nui's face is about the same size, maybe a little smaller; let's call it 300 miles even. 2. As any art teacher can tell you, a human being is about 7.5 times the height of their face. 3. Now, Mata Nui has fairly humanlike proportions, but his head is a little bit small for him, so let's round that 7.5 up to 9. Or even 10, I'll be generous here (and make the math a little easier). 4. If Mata Nui's face is 300 miles, his overall height is then about 3000 miles. In feet, that's 15,840,000 -- less than half of the figure we were given in 2008. EDIT: And watching the Mata Nui Rising video again, I think I may have overestimated the size of his face under the island -- it seems like the island covered his face with a fair amount of room to spare, and the peninsulas on the northern and southern tips had no face under them at all, so I think I will take my final estimate down to an even 15 million feet. Seems reasonable enough. EDIT x2: Thanks to this image that bonesiii pointed out, I've learned that the head:body ratio is in fact 1:12. Given that, I revised my final estimate again. Mata Nui's face, being apparently the size of the island sans northern and southern peninsulas, is probably about 280 miles. 280x12=3360 miles total, just under 18 million feet. I've discounted the image's argument for retaining the 40 million height because, as SPIRIT pointed out, it still conflicts with the hints we were given starting in '01 -- for instance, the Mangai volcano being thus named because "Mangai" is the Maori word for "mouth" -- and yet, in the above image, the volcano is nowhere near the GSR's mouth. If this is true, we wil have to re-estimate the sizes of the Red Star and Spherus Magna as well. What are your thoughts on this?

Bonesiii's epic The Destiny of Bionicle offers some pretty sensible explanations of the physics of such massive planets IIRC -- it's all to do with the EP in the core, like T1S said. Personally, though, I have to say I always felt the GSR's height was excessive. 10 million feet would have been perfectly sufficient -- that's still almost two thousand miles/~3218km from head to toe, only slightly shorter than the U.S. is wide -- and as such it would necessitate Spherus Magna to be only as large as, say, Neptune, rather than Jupiter. This would also make travel across the planet slightly more believable. I believe the in-story explanation was that because the GSR and Red Star were (supposed to be) a closed system, it would require less energy to restore units that had died than it would be to create new ones. Think of it like the recycle bin on a computer -- let's say you write a story and then accidentally delete the file. A copy shows up in your recycle bin; now, which would take less effort on your part: going into the recycle bin and hitting "Restore" on the file, or rewriting the story from scratch? It does cheapen some character deaths from a story perspective, but it makes sense in-universe -- remember that the Great Beings were not thinking of the MU inhabitants as people, but rather as just nanotech.

Oh my goodness. I remember being curious about the show back when the theme was new -- I don't know what I expected, but this...There are no words for this. It's by far the most 90s thing the early 2000s ever produced, glorious and horrifying. I might have to keep watching just to satisfy my morbid curiosity -- it's like a grisly trainwreck from which you just can't look away. In short, a true national treasure. I'm also really jealous of Nick having that sort of internet speed in freaking 2002, when my family still had dial-up And I wish I'd known you can get a massive database of mysterious alien runes just by searching "Ancient Symbols" on Yahoo also re:the Egg Ship, it's just hilariously ironic that they thought they were paying homage to a one-time cult classic already fading into obscurity, only for said show to be resurrected just three short years later. This also makes me wonder if, given 10-20 more years, we will begin to appreciate late 90s/early 00s CGI as "campy" in the same way we can now appreciate classic Doctor Who's green bubblewrap costumes and cardboard setpieces. Lastly, I can't help but feel sorry for the two kids in the lead roles, whose acting careers probably shriveled as a direct result of this miasma. Wonder how they're doing now