Random thoughts about canon #5: Radio Ga-ga · 12:22am Feb 7th, 2016
This is much more off-the-ground theorizing than my typical article on the subject, but eh, why not, canon is sparse, and fanon on the subject is sparser still.
We know ponies have at least some functional equivalents of electronics, namely, Vinyl Scratch’s rig. Notice that in A Canterlot Wedding, it includes what obviously has to be a radio microphone. The microphone shown matches the typical style and size of a large diaphragm condenser or ribbon microphone, both devices that have been around since 1920s and did not change a whole lot since. Actually transmitting the resulting audio wirelessly even a short distance to the amplifier was not practical until much later, and requires solid-state electronics to be feasible.
So the question I’m going wonder about today is, if ponies can do short range wireless audio, and presumably, have solid state electronics, why don’t they appear to have broadcast radio or television?
Well, here’s my cute little theory which explains this particular bit of schizo tech.
There is an interesting tidbit about the history of radio that we know, and it’s the fact that radio developed to work at higher and higher frequencies, but not initially. Amateur broadcasts were restricted to frequencies above 1500 kHz, because lower frequencies were reserved for commercial broadcasters. There was, of course, a reason.
A radio wave behaves, in a certain sense, like a beam of visible light, but the frequency, for the purposes of radio propagation, is best understood as how tightly focused the beam is, and how much it disperses in space and turns into ambient light. The actual picture is a great deal more complex, but that’s close enough. For radio frequencies below about 3 MHz, radio waves actually curve around obstacles, which makes the distance a broadcast station can be heard from directly proportional to how much power the transmitter radiates into the air – this is called groundwave propagation. Beyond that frequency, the “beam” is focused too tightly to curve, and for a certain time, higher frequencies were thought to be useless.
Until radio amateurs, who were only permitted to use frequencies higher than the limit of efficient groundwave propagation, discovered skywave propagation. Sufficiently tightly focused “beams,” instead of dispersing through the atmosphere, reflect off its upper, irradiated layers. Then they bounce off the ground again. The resulting zigzag can reach much further, and at much lower transmission power, than broadcast stations relying on groundwave propagation could.
This discovery caused the shift into progressively higher and higher frequency bands, introduction of more advanced forms of signal transmission, and with them, the higher bandwidth, which eventually permitted to squish a video signal through.
1. With magic in the mix, it’s hardly a settled question whether they do.
It doesn’t seem likely that the ponies wouldn’t make such a discovery, if they use electromagnetic waves at all.1 But what if they couldn’t make that discovery in the first place, because it would not work?
2. Which is amusing, because it definitely has a “Cats” musical…
We owe the existence of ionosphere primarily to ionization by solar radiation. There are many odd things about the sun of Equestria, but since Twilight’s Kingdom, we can certainly conclude, that while it can be many things, it is not a real star. It would not be a stretch to imagine, then, that ionosphere does not exist either, or at least, does not have a Kennelly-Heaviside layer2 to reflect radio waves back down.
3. Which would happen, if it was in any way connected to the magic horsepower of individual unicorns.
This would stunt the development of radio frequency electronics severely, even though it would not affect the development of audio frequency electronics – a broadcast radio station might cover a large city like Manehattan, but a station covering the entire continent would be expensive and rather impractical, especially if electric power is expensive.3
4. My guess is, 10 MHz would be enough.
Incidentally, if ponies could jump this gap of frequencies that seem to be unusable, and use a directional antenna, eventually4 they could use a much more interesting radio propagation path, the moonbounce – that is, radio waves reflected off the surface of their much smaller and much closer moon, permitting very low power communication over very long distances… as long as the moon is up.
Do you think Luna would like her moon being an integral part of connecting ponies? :)
Wow, Radio doesn't work because Equestria has a little Discworld-sun, who knew?
... and then, radio propagation beyond the horizon would only work while the moon is up, that is, at night! So every radio-loving pony would be staying up and enjoying Luna's night!
Problem solved, by the power of SCIENCE!
That is a fascinating idea. Why have I never heard this theory before?
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Because very few people these days actually remember these things, mostly. See the Transformers movie for example...
Please explain more about this whole moon and sun issue... my current story would benefit HUGELY from what knowledge you have gathered on this subject. I don't know about this because I haven't seen those two episodes.
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Check out RTAC #7 and RTAC #9.
The TLDR: The total body of evidence suggests that Equestria is located on a spherical Earth, which is far smaller than ours, with the sun and moon rotating around it on a magical equivalent of a pantograph suspension. The whole thing probably orbits a neutron star or a white dwarf which is almost completely invisible due to the orbit being very high, and other planetary bodies orbit it as well.
4140298 Jesus fuck that sounds like something that would be horribly complicated to implement into my current story.
But... after reading both of those posts... here's what I think I'll use as my story canon; tell me if this sounds good or not. I'm a huge sucker for technicalities, so I love the work you've done.
Equestria is on a planet maybe a third the size of Earth, but is about as dense for reasons. The Sun is simply a ball of magic created thousands of years ago by Celestia's and Luna's parents, who are basically gods, decide the little planet of Equus is a good place for ponies and shit to exist. The create their own Sun and give its control to Celestia, and an already orbiting moon (tiny, of course) is controlled by Luna so that there is a balance.
Since their shit is so different, magnetic fields don't really exist in the way Earth's magnetic field does, and as you mentioned in this post and as Eruantalon in the comments said: radio really only works at night because no Ionosphere.
If you care to read what I've got thus far of my current story, which is just a little 1000 word prologue, you'll see why this kind of thing will be important.
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It is a matter or personal choice what to take as canon and how to interpret it, because the show writers clearly have no idea and/or don't care. See My Little Canon. Pick the things you think let you make a better story, the story they are trying to tell us was never designed to make sense.
But here are some things for you to think about which will define your story, whatever it is, if you plan to touch this kind of scale:
* There's a huge split straight down the primary canon sometime around Faust left the team. Before she did, the Princesses were treated as gods and were implied to have enormous power. After she did, their power level has been consistently downplayed, and the biggest they were actually shown to have is in the kiloton range. Your alicorns would get more and more divine the more normal your planet gets. This affects Discord's role (see RTAC #6) and power level, and numerous attributes of pony daily life, as well, as Faust had a certain requirement to avoid showing any examples of modern technology unless it is explicitly required for a joke or a plot. This requirement has been progressively relaxing after she left.
* The canon stands pretty firm on the point that Celestia and Luna were not always in charge of the sun and moon, there are multiple references to this. But if the Journal of the Two Sisters is true, it is impossible for the unicorns to perform that duty for longer than a few decades, because they'd have to breed like rabbits, since they essentially had to sacrifice ten adult unicorns for every day/night cycle. If they didn't have that requirement, that actually un-deifies the alicorn sisters. Either you have to decide that the Sun and Moon were never under the control of the unicorns, and most of the events retold in Hearth's Warming Eve are nothing but a morality fable, and discount the Journal, or you have to posit something like a lost artifact that was the original control point for both. And losing it is what prompted them to migrate to Equestria where they met the Sisters. This is a knot you will need to untangle one way or another, and there are multiple ways which can get you a good story.
* As far as I can tell, canonically, there is no space in Equestria's history for more than ~1500 years since colonization of Equestria. See RTAC #8. If you want longer, you will need to discount something. This has direct bearing on how old the sisters are. Notably, they don't have to be born in Equestria either. In The Crystalling, they pretty much admit it that either they are ascended like other alicorns, or not born in this world at all...
In short, this puzzle can be folded in numerous ways, and being aware of the pieces you choose to leave behind helps a lot in producing something internally consistent.
P.S. Sure, I'd love to read that. Send me a PM?
4140330 https://www.fimfiction.net/story/341336/changing-of-tides Doesn't need a PM; the prologue is published. As for the first chapter, I'll send that to you via PM.
For the sake of simplicity and for the sake of no one will most likely give a shit about how their world actually works when reading this, I'll just stick with the idea I posed to you with the addition of some things you mentioned.
I've said this once more, but thank you for all this time and effort you've put into making all of this info available. I sort of hate you for it, because now I HAVE to read all this stuff and develop my own opinions. Writing is hard, eh?
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I'll read it when I get a moment. :)
Most of this blog is just a side effect of making notes for my own magnum opus, Aporia, and one day I decided to clean some up and post in case anyone stumbles on them. This turned out to be surprisingly popular.
And I make a lot of notes.
4140334 Well, good night to you, sir. If I have any more questions I'll be sure to hit you up. I look forward to your reading of either story, as I assume you got my PM.
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Just mind that the absence of magnetic fields means a navigational compass would need be tuned to something else.
I thought somepony had a navigational compass cutiemark, complete with red/black magnet-implying-coloration of pointer, but it appears only compass roses.