Eye in the Sky · 7:25am Jan 5th, 2013
In the most-recent chapter of “The Best of All Possible Worlds”, I introduced the visual metaphor of an “eye in the sky” watching everything that happens in the city of Canterlot. That mental image inspired in me the idea of a rather different sort of “eye in the sky”: a unique version of a first-contact scenario between Equestria and Earth.
Imagine a portal between Earth’s universe and Equestria’s. On one side, it’s a circle hundreds of kilometers across, and it’s floating in a low synchronous orbit above Earth. The other side of the portal similarly floats above the atmosphere of Planet Equestria. Story-wise, the advantage of this kind of portal is in the complications that it eliminates: since it’s visible across half of both planets, it is utterly impossible for any government or conspiracy group de jour to try to cover it up, and because it’s so big, it’s really hard to control access to it. Also, by using a portal we eliminate being forced to set the story in a future time when the technology necessary to travel to Equestria has been invented. To avoid the end of a world or two, we’ll say that this is your standard science fiction/fantasy portal: it allows light and solid objects to pass through, but the devastating effects of gravity are conveniently blocked.
OK, now let me describe how this scenario would work, starting with Earth (I’ll use the United States, for no other reason than because that’s where I live): One night, there is this tremendous flash of light in the northern sky with no visible source. After the flash fades, nothing obvious appears to have changed. However, because there are so many automatic sky monitoring devices in existence, within an hour a whole lot of alerts start going off. Soon after actual people start studying these alerts, the astronomy blogs start trumpeting a completely unprecedented find: a circular area over northern Canada, the size of the full moon, no longer contains the stars it used to. Another hour or two compounds the impossibility: the stars which are visible in that little black circle belong on the opposite side of the sky! [I’m putting Earth and Equestria at opposite ends of their orbits relative to each other, just to make this interesting, but having their day/night cycles coincide, to keep this from getting too obvious.]
As a writer, I don’t like employing coincidences unless I’ve got a really good reason, so no weather satellites pass over this relatively tiny object just yet. However, I can easily imagine a communications satellite passing over the anomaly and having its signal cut off as the object blocks it and then resuming as it emerges, leading to thousands of angry customers calling their satellite television operator.
Meanwhile the various defense agencies of the world panic over the flash of light and point all of their radar at the object, utterly failing to detect it.
The next day dawns. Once again, there is no obvious difference in the daytime sky, because the object is above the Earth’s atmosphere. Spectroscopic readings of the anomaly, however, reveal a strong light source with a different spectrum from our Sun’s. Developing news and wild guesses about the significance of this “eye in the sky” appear in the morning talk shows and Internet news aggregators. It’s obviously interesting to any science geeks out there, but the fact that the scientific community cannot yet agree as to what exactly this is keeps most of the general public from reacting. It doesn’t seem to be a threat. (Of course, there’s the usual population of crazies running around at this point, but that always happens in these sorts of stories, so I’m going to ignore them.)
Now, let’s turn this scenario around and look at it from Equestria’s side. I don’t have a really good story about where this portal came from; all I have at the moment is the lame excuse that “a draconequus did it” (a new D.E. attacks after invading Equestria from another dimension, he finds himself in way over his head, he takes a hostage, and, while he’s trying to escape through a portal to a randomly selected universe [ours], he’s blasted by Celestia while Luna rescues the hostage). Luna instantly knows there’s something foreign in the night sky; Twilight leads the royal astronomers in mapping the object and finding out the “opposite side of the sky” effect. Being much better versed in magic than Earth investigators (and having a sky goddess as a research assistant), Twilight quickly deduces the nature of the object. Miraculously, it is found to be stable.
Twilight has no direct evidence that the other end of the portal is associated with another planet until after sunrise, when she discovers that a subtly-different frequency of sunlight is coming out of it. Twilight of course is all for exploration at this point, but Equestria doesn’t have a space program. In any case, Celestia decides she wants to know what kind of world is on the other side of that portal. Since in my headcannon Celestia can see anything her sun sees, she simply causes the orb to deviate from its usual path to pass right over the portal...
The moment when a second sun appears in Earth’s sky is when most of humanity finally figures out that something big is going on. This moment will be glorious.
And...that’s all I’ve got. This is a scenario, not a story. It has some fantastic imagery, but doesn’t go anywhere. I suppose there are plot hooks all over the place (the fate of that draconequus, whether the portal truly is stable, the question of whether magic can seep out of the portal and start affecting Earth, etc., etc.), but for the moment, I have nothing worth basing a story on.
I did think the idea too good to let it fade away, however, so here it is—make of it what you will.
Ori supergate?
I dunno, I'm sure it could be done well, but it is pretty cliched, especially with Draconequs did it for an explanation
680546
Well certainly the reason is the worst part of it and equally certainly, if I had a story, I would have a better reason.
680546
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680542 Has anyone made a stargate crossover yet?
That's something I need to see.
680560 I read one a while ago, but it sucked, so I forgot what the name is. There is a good one on fanfiction.net, but I forgot the name of that one too
680560
The best Stargate crossover IMO is this one on ED.
I like it, particularly the bit about satellite television customers throwing a fit because of interference.
A convenient portal that doesn't allow gravity through, huh? Though I bet it would make for some good conflict if it started to later on(gradually, of course), perhaps after a big deal of political friction that initially makes cooperation to deal with the impending doomsday difficult, perhaps with a few powerful people reaping economic advantage from relations between worlds who might try and deny that it's happening at all.
There's plenty of places you can go with this without introducing a single new element from what you've described. While this is currently just a scenario and not a story, is there any chance of it becoming a story later on?
680617
If I had enough to tell it as a story, then sure. I mean, the "two sun scene" alone justifies writing the whole thing. Can't you just picture the brains of about a billion humans all melting at the exact same second?
680573 Thanks! I'm definitely going to be checking that out, to be honest I'm actually kind of excited to see where it goes.
A way to make this story interesting would be to stagger the whole thing over multiple years. I mean it's probably gonna take a few probes (which will take a few years to put together) before NASA or whatever even consider sending a monkey through the portal. While the science is going on, the 'Eye in the Sky' starts to seep into culture and everything. Songs are made about it, speculative books and movies are made about it, crazy doom cult want to throw themselves at it in roughshod rockets. Meanwhile on Equestria the ponies, who have a better idea of what's going on don't have the tech to do anything about it can still SEE into the portal through magical means! And they're learning, learning fast, from what they see. Then once you've established all that you can pick your main characters and show how the first contact would go about under those circumstances.
You ever saw that episode of Star Trek: Voyager where Voyager gets stuck in orbit around a donut shaped world where time goes faster and the prescence of their ship in the sky for millenia affects every aspect of those aliens' culture? It would be a bit like that, on both sides.
680560 You can crossover pretty much ANYTHING with Stargate and it'll work out. Same thing with Ponies, so Stargate and Ponies should be like... super doubleplusgood!
680573 Ahh I love that one! I wish it would update again :(
For the sake of good speculative fiction on Earth/Equestria interaction I don't need there to be a good reason for things to have gotten started, or really any reason at all.
Actually, thinking about it, if contact was intentional for Nefarious Purpose X or Innocent Purpose Y being exploited, I might go for that. I can't help but think any other reason would only exist as almost a handwave so we can to get to the good stuff like the worldview of a species being shattered.
Well, this may be interesting.
Some technical stuff, though:
One one side, it’s a circle hundreds of kilometers across, and it’s floating in a low synchronous orbit above Earth.
So Earth's gravity does not affect it? Makes sense, why should it?
On the other hand, why should the portal attach to a point on Earth's surface? Well, I'm sure Twilight will invent some explanation.
a circular area over northern Canada, the size of the full moon, no longer contains the stars it used to.
For a 100 km object to be of the angular size of the full moon, it must be about 10000 km away. So you don't need to worry about weather satellites passing over it: low-orbit satellites are well beneath it, and geo-synchronous satellites won't pass over it because they are, well, geo-synchronous (and are located over equator).
By the way, astronomers would be able to quickly determine the portal's linear size and the distance to it by comparing its positions in the sky when observed from different points on the surface.
Another hour or two compounds the impossibility: the stars which are visible in that little black circle belong on the opposite side of the sky!
So Earth and Equestria have the same star maps? OK... How about more distant objects, like galaxies?
I’m putting Earth and Equestria at opposite ends of their orbits relative to each other
So... Equestria does orbit its sun? Then how does Celestia moves the sun later in the story?
Once again, there is no obvious difference in the daytime sky, because the object is above the Earth’s atmosphere. Spectroscopic readings of the anomaly, however, reveal a strong light source with a different spectrum from our Sun’s.
If the portal is above Equestrian atmosphere, then the light which was scattered by the atmosphere and then passed the portal will travel AWAY from Earth. And the direct sunlight passing through the portal will not probably even touch Earth's atmosphere to be scattered since the portal is in such high latitudes. (Well, this depends on the specific configuration. But if the light touches the atmosphere, then it probably will touch Earth's surface as well since the atmosphere is thin compared to Earth's diameter. So the Equestrian sun will be visible somewhere on Earth.)
So I don't see how they would detect something like this.
680732
"Why is the portal attached to a point on Earth's surface?" Well on the Equestrian side, that portal is motionless, because Equestria is the center of its universe and everything revolves around it. It is fixed to the same relative position in Earth's universe, which gives it the appearance of orbiting.
"So Earth and Equestria have the same star maps?" There have been references in the show to familiar constellations like Orion, plus the existence of the Ursas. So far I have not heard any references to constellations we don't have.
"So...Equestria does orbit its sun?" Err...no, that was a screw-up on my part. Equestria has the same nighttime skies as Earth, and that also applies to the seasons. Luna's rotation of the nighttime sky around the planet is timed so that the Spring constellations are overhead in the spring, and the Autumn constellations are overhead in the autumn. Now Discord messed up the seasons during his original reign of terror, so when Celestia and Luna took over, they had to decide which season to start with. It just so happens that, as a result of that choice, Earth and Equestria have opposite seasons: when it's winter in the Northern Hemisphere on Earth, it's summer in the Northern Hemisphere on Equestria. That means that if you were teleported from a spot on nighttime Earth to the same relative spot on nighttime Equestria, you'd suddenly be seeing stars that would normally be shining over the other side of the planet.
That whole sunlight thing: Yeah, I'm having trouble with that as well. The notion is that this is a relatively small keyhole: somewhere on Earth, you could probably see the Equestrian sun even before Celestia started moving it. But that's something like the path of totality for a solar eclipse, in that it's a very narrow track across the face of the Earth. I guess that could work instead: the scientists couldn't detect Equestrian sunlight, but they could start tracking reports of the second sun.
Oh, and I didn't even realize this before, but if that hole's over northern Canada on Earth, that means the Crystal Kingdom in Equestria will be right under it. Try tying that into vague prophesies that the kingdom is Equestria's guardian!
681584
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somewhere on Earth, you could probably see the Equestrian sun even before Celestia started moving it.
Well... this depends on the portal's location. In order for the Equestrian sun to be visible through the portal somewhere on Earth, the (angle between (the sun as seen from the point on Equestria right under the portal) and (the zenith)) must be less than (the angular radius of Earth as seen from the portal).
/* Sorry, the last sentence was somewhat convoluted, so I added some parentheses to clarify its structure. And then I had to use slashes instead of parentheses for this comment...
If we assume that the portal is 10000 km above Earth's surface, then this angle is arcsin(6400/16400)≈ 23°. On Earth, to for Sun to be so high even at summer solstice noon, you must be at the latitude of at most 23°+23.5°=46.5°. Well, of course, Equestria's... value analogous to Earth's axial tilt - i.e., the angle between the sun's positions at noon on an equinox and a solstice - may be greater than 23.5°, but that would mean larger regions with polar nights and days.
So in order for the Equestrian sun to be visible through the portal somewhere on Earth, the portal must be at a lower altitude or a lower latitude.
But if it is visible, then it will probably happen at night in the place, so it will be very notable.
By the way, Equestrian star spectra probably wouldn't have the red shift. Though I'm not sure whether the difference would be detectable if compared to the stars visible with a naked eye from Earth - they are close to Earth, so the red shift is small.
Wait... if the stars from Equestria's universe orbit Equestria, this may lead to some effects on how they look - including red shift again, but from time dilation instead of Doppler shift. But this depends on how much of relativity theory is true in that universe and how far away from Equestria the stars are.
683544
Oooo, red shift! I didn't even think of that!
Anyway, the height isn't set in stone. I want the portal to be at least as big as the full moon when seen from earth, but I don't care all that much how big it actually is--the hundreds of kilometers thing was just a random number. Just so long as the government can't cover it up by parking a helicopter in front of it or something.