
Stellar
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I feel ya on the retail job! Overnight grocery stocking has been bonkers! It's bad since receiving double-sized trucks have now become to normal for my team and I. Hope it all gets better for my fellow retail workers!
The New Year is also super exciting since my husband is a New Year's baby! Best wishes!
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Due to my sensibility of wanting to thoroughly know what I'm describing when I write about it, the penultimate part of my science fiction trilogy has required large-scale answers to large-scale questions.
That is to say: I've graduated from epidemiology and genetics, to calculating the theoretical dimensions of the entire universe.
Sigh. Why am I doing this? At least my dragons weren't trying to eat entire galaxies.- Show previous comments 3 more
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@Etotsira that is super cool! Much respect for choosing such a fundamental and complex field to study. However: I'm not opposed to help, but I don't know how much help can be rendered, realistically speaking. The problem with exploring the past of a super-advanced progenitor species (specifically Veil of Shadow's pre-Sundering Mishith ancestors) is that they had an understanding of the cosmos in a macroscopic way that goes several orders of magnitude beyond current human knowledge.
It's not the first time I've come across this problem writing science-fiction -- trying to hypothesise the future based on the present.
So, there are naturally certain assumptions I must make and stick with if I want to portray a given scenario as fictional reality -- and some of those assumptions can be messed with through narrative decisions about that as-yet unestablished canonical science. Maybe the most basic assumption on this topic is the curvature of space, which predicates a lot of what comes after; i.e. current theory strongly supports a non-curved flat universe, quite possibly with Euclidean space extending infinitely in all directions -- yet, an amorphous elongated mass of light and matter that just stretches on endlessly doesn't make for a very interesting concept, and it isn't even the only answer.
So, what then if the humans were calculating the cosmic microwave background radiation wrong, or that it was measurably different in this area of the universe for some reason, and consequently the formula is wrong, and therefore space actually has a positive curvature? The degree to which that gradient curves would be based on how far the numbers actually deviate. The smaller the difference, the flatter the curve, and the more astronomically enormous that sphere would be -- only, again, it doesn't have to be a sphere (at least not in the traditional 3D sense), because there are other geometric shapes it could take.
This response is plenty long already, so let me finish it by saying that what I come up with is heavily reliant on those assumptions, and on a willingness to match nature with what seems more likely and has more narrative functionality, even if that on occasion drifts from conventional wisdom. If you can add anything more enlightening to that, by all means, I will certainly listen. -
The only thing I could offer you, because you seem to have thought about this, is that if it doesn’t break the second law of thermodynamics (the entropy of a system can only remain the same or increase) it’s possible. Furthermore, we know the universe isn’t a sphere, and that is because the universe is expanding (another fun fact: the rate at which the universe is expanding is increasing too) and I highly suggest you take a moment to read about manifolds (you can ignore the math, unless of course you don’t want to) since they are of vital importance to the topic of general relativity, and we are discussing the macroscopic level.
tl;dr: go as crazy as the second law of thermodynamics will let you
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if you're a follower of mine and start seeing notifications about Hidden Sunlight popping up in the near future and you don't know why, there's a good reason for it. Please check this thread in my fan club for further details!
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So, two things to announce here, one minor and one somewhat more important.
Firstly, due to GA's ongoing site improvements, my forum has morphed to a 'fan club'. Functionally it is very similar to what it was before, but I would encourage anyone who is, in fact, a fan, to go there and join it. It will be the most reliable way of keeping track of what I'm doing, outside of simply following my profile and statuses here.
Secondly: my next book has been decided. If you want to find out what it will be, please go here.