Strange story idea of mine · 1:08am Mar 18th, 2014
This is something I came up with in a thread a while back and am deciding to put it here if I ever intend to use it or someone else does. Pretty bare as of now though.
Equestria is actually a human lab experiment, the entire planet is merely 10 meters in diameter, the ponies are near microscopic, the planet is inside a hollow titanium alloy sphere, being held up by graviton emitters, the 'sky' is actually a replica of the real sky down to the smallest of detail and is a separate, thin, LCD screen sphere held up by two spindles which allow it to rotate 360 degrees, it also uses holographic emitters to produce the appearance of comets, meteors, or other stellar activity. The 'sun' has a moderate wattage heat lamp behind it's cowl while the moon has a large LED.
Magic is actually a radiation produced artificially and the ponies, and other magical beings, were constructed to specifically harness it and test its possibilities for things such as tractor beams in starships. They use the 'magic' to spin the artificial sky on its bearings, thus bringing the entire 'sky' around.
The whole thing is within a thick lead alloy shielding that prevents any of the radiation from escaping or interacting with anything outside the test area, scientists observe every action from nanoscopic cameras in the 'sky' and various mountain ranges.
It's the 23rd century.
That is an interesting idea, although I am not sure why you would bother making it a sphere. A flat world with some kind of bounding killbox (the oceans would probably work if you added some really nasty wildlife/sentinels) would be far easier to make, and you could make the "sun" and "moon" operate on "magic" triggers to experiment with device interactions. After all, the controllers can always override the system if it starts getting out of whack.
Don't be the guy that brings his son's RC car to work.
1934867 Why a sphere is simple.
Globes.
images.wikia.com/mlp/images/archive/2/29/20120926152619!Spike_oooh_globe_S2E10.png
One would not take the time to put maps on a sphere if the planet was actually flat, as a flat map would be much easier to make and more so correct.
The only reason they'd take the time to put it on a globe is if they actually knew, or at least believed without much doubt, that the planet was indeed, round.
The triggers is an interesting idea, though since the original concept was to test the energy's viability for tractor beams, manually rotating something many times the size of the object (Or in this case, pony) is a pretty strong example that it is not only viable, but quite efficient.
Imagine what a starship sized tractor beam could accomplish if they have a similar power to mass ratio?
1935938 Well, the entire project is inside an armoured shell, so no attack of the giant automobile here.
1936105 That could be the real Earth.
Also, that kind of power to weight ratio may not be scalable. Things frequently fall off with the square of distance and mass is a cubic scaling so observed power levels are almost certainly not particularly important.
1939709 Why would it be the real Earth? It neither resembles the real continents, and ponies have no knowledge of Earth. (Unless you consider EG going to Earth....)
The power may not have a direct scale, but considering a starship powered by an matter anti-matter reactor is going to have a significantly higher power capacity than a pony, and the energy does work with larger objects (If it didn't the point of the testing would be pretty useless) I still put my money on 4,000ft long starships pushing around large asteroids with it.