Ponies have a strange attitude towards technology. They ride railroads and fly chariots. They have advanced hydroelectric power plants and light their homes with fireflies. They plow their fields on muscle power and invent crazy apparatus for squeezing cider out of apples. They use x-ray and parade around with spears. They play dubstep and listen to cello. They have indoor plumbing and grow rocks in fields. They like horse drawn horse-drawn carriages and take color photographs of them to show their foals.
These are the stories of ponies and their schizotech.
A collection of independent short stories united by the common theme of ponies creatively applying their knowledge and friendship to push the boundaries.
I do not expect this to be a regular thing, but this will get added on to in the future.
Assuming that Rainbow's escape velocity is somewhat over the speed of sound and that Epona is as dense as Earth, I'm getting 322km for the radius of the whole planet. That's less than what you'd need for the body to self-shape into a sphere (400km for ice, 600km for rock, if memory serves).
Crikey.
(Also, you may want to do some spaces between paragraphs. This dense form is hard to read.)
Best line!
Cool sciencey stuff! These should be fun stories.
Minor punctuation niggles aside, looks good. You really do need to put line spaces between your paragraphs though. I found the first-person Rainbow Dash interesting. Haven't seen that before.
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This one is not mine, alas. It's a direct throwback to Friendship is Magic #6 where they do go to the Moon, and which I based a lot of my estimates on...
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There is considerable confusion over how fast Rainbow actually goes in canon, and some authors actually go so far as to cite Mach 10. Which is probably nonsense, at least for low altitudes, but I'm assuming that there is a sweet spot at the top of the atmosphere where pegasus propulsion still works, which would permit them to accelerate indefinitely, if they can survive this. The planet is tiny, despite 1g surface gravity. The atmosphere isn't very deep. The moon is close, and also has an atmosphere somehow.
Well, if the world is crazy, why not exploit it? Rainbow would want to, eventually. :)
As for paragraphs... I'd love to put some spacing between paragraphs, rather than just an empty line, but alas. You can adjust line height when reading, though.
EDIT: There, rebuilt with no-indent, spaced paragraphs. :( I suppose I should do the same to Aporia...
Fun stuff, and I am interested to see where you go with this concept.
(We too listen to both cellos and dubstep, you know.
)
322 Km radium? That would give a surface area of about 1.32 million square kilometers, or 502 thousand square miles: if we accept this globe as canon https://derpicdn.net/img/2012/8/28/85176/full.png even if Equestria occupies the whole or most of one of those purported continent, it is unlikely to be more than 100,000 square miles, or around the size of Great Britain. Doesn't seem like it would have room for the diversity of landscapes on the show, but then it's climate and ecosystems in no way are likely to make sense, either.
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Check the blog post referred to in the author's note for lots of research that lead me to this particular piece. :)
My guess is that the pony Earth is not that small, (I can't tell how small it has to be exactly from the very limited information available) but when adding up all the canonical statements, it does come out to be something much more at home in Kerbal Space Program than in our universe. The Moon, however, totally is no more than 500km in diameter.
And Equestria seems to be occupying about 1/8th of the total planetary surface...
I used to accept Reality Check´s personal interpretation: Equestria is still stuck in a pre-industrial period, and almost all their technology is either imported from the other countries (minotaurs, gryphons, and other races with hand-like appendices) or copied from the human-like world from the mirror, resulting in the schizo. It´s not so unlike many examples in real life.
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It’s a good interpretation,¹ and all too often I see authors settle on no interpretation at all when the issue does come up, which I find silly.² But I think I can wring more drama out of the ponies who stand on their own (or at least try to) as an alien race in an alien world. These shorts are not about interpretation. They’re about what the ponies can do with what they have. :)
7053025 Personally, my headcanon is all the tech more advanced than 19th century state of the art aren't actually tech at all, but operate by magic. (In other words, a (pony) Wizard did it.
)
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If magic is a natural force in Equestria like electricity is our universe, then is science. Just changing Watts for Thaums.
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Yes, but it's not necessarily going to involve the mechanical complexity of electricity-driven machinery.
For analogy, Diskworld cameras:
The box said, "It's no good. I've run out of pink."
A hitherto unnoticed door opened in front of his eyes. A small, green and hideously warty humanoid figure leaned out, pointed at a colour-encrusted palette in one clawed hand, and screamed at him.
"No pink, See?" screeched the homunculus."No good you going on pressing the lever when there's no pink, is there? If you wanted pink you shouldn't of took all those pictures of young ladies, should you? It's monochrome from now on, friend. Alright?"
"Alright. Yeah, Sure," said Rincewind. In one dim corner of the little box he thought he could see an easel, and a tiny unmade bed. He hoped he couldn't. "So long as that's understood," said the imp, and shut the door. Rincewind thought he could hear the muffled sound of grumbling and the scrape of a stool being dragged across the floor.
Interesting. There's quite a bit of schizophrenic technology in Equestria to explore, and if every chapter is this good, this will most certainly be a grand trip indeed.
R ∈ {} != R ∉ {}, if you ask me.
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Um... An empty set by definition has no elements, so isn't R ∈ {} just nonsense? :)
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That depends on how you read it. In a certain sense, it means, that ((R ∈ {}) == (R = {}}) != (R ∉ {} == R != {}), but I'm not enough of a mathematician to prove it.
Hell, even if it was just me talking out of my ass, it was fun to talk about it outside of a math lecture. Brofist for that, dude.
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Hey, I'm not a mathematician at all, (most types of mathematical syntax don't agree with me and it's mutual) but a more readable definition of Russel's paradox just wouldn't fit in there. :)
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Shows how much I don't know about that stuff, then. I sure as hell ain't in any position to argue with Bertrand Russell. If he thinks it's a paradox, it probably is.
Atomic theory maybe?
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No idea. But it's another short that got stuck in my head once I started thinking about this screenshot and what it could really mean.
And then I remembered your "RATS" and decided to frame it as Pinkie's fairytale to make it less definitive, because I really don't know what else the cutie mark could be for. In popular consciousness, this is the symbol for nuclear physics. Nuclear physicists laugh at that, because, you know, lithium, but use it anyway.
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Well I don't consider the comics canon so I doubt we can say our stories happen in the same continuity, but it's still a fun chapter.
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I did not think they could, but Pinkie being Flurry's favorite babysitter I can totally imagine, and thank you for noticing that. :)
Earth ponies invented the first atomic weapon?
That that, unicorn supremacists!
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Canonically, Crystal Empire was supposedly ruled by a unicorn princess, but the overwhelming majority of the population are earth ponies, with a small fraction of pegasi, with unicorns being very rare. So yeah, if such a weapon could exist... earth pony
magicscience and back-breaking work is the only option. :)That was certainly interesting. The tension you had in the confrontation was exquisite, and Sombra certainly seemed insane enough to set off a nuclear weapon at point blank range (even if he would survive).
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Thanks. :)
I wouldn't even call him insane, myself. Sombra as he is detailed in the comics canon is primarily a tragic villain, deprived of things ponies consider the basic building blocks of happiness through no fault of his own, and then choosing to embrace his nature rather than keep struggling against it, and even turn it up to eleven. This kind of character goes very well with potentially suicidal attacks like that. :)
That's what the setting needs: nuclear proliferation!
Power of the sun is fusion, not fission.
But then the little tiny sun of Equestria probably runs off magic rather than atomic processes anyway.
Hmm, unless it was specifically designed as a dirty bomb, fallout from a nuke just doesn't remain at dangerous levels for a thousand years. A few decades, a century if you want to be cautious, but a millennium? No. I think Pinkie is just making crap up again. (See, mystery on the Friendship Express: Pinkie isn't one to let actual facts get in the way of a good story).
Also, the problem with a Uranium 235 bomb is not the basis physics, but separating out the -235 isotope from the more common sort of atoms. That's not a physics problem as much it is an engineering problem. The Crystal Empire seems a bit small for projects on this scale... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-12_National_Security_Complex
Or is isotope separation part of Earth Pony Magic?
(Personally, I purelyhate the comics version of Sombra: so he's an evil mage with shadow powers because he's a black shadow creature of evil nature? Way to be essentialist, writers. Let's have some more "all dragons are jerks" episodes, why not? And his powers aren't achievements, they just come with the species package. I'm sticking with Unicorn genius in my head canon. )
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Multiple factors at play here.
* Luna broke some of the explosive lensing, bringing the point blank blast (barely) under the capacity of Celestia's shield, but causing much more fallout than would happen otherwise.
* Amore's snowflake (that is, the streets of Crystal Empire) is a pretty paranoid spell, meant to survive ending up on the unlit side of the planet until the sun drifts back into view. Once triggered, it wasn't taking any chances.
*
NaquadahDark magic infusion for extra yield also increases half-life a lot.Or Pinkie's just making the whole thing up because she's Pinkie. :)
Methods we know involve industry on much higher scales than ponies appear to have to get anywhere. Sombra needed to enslave the entire adult population to do it, and it horrified them into complete near-comatose PTSD for what had to have been weeks for them... What do you think? ;)
Actually, it's that very "enslavement of Crystal Ponies" referred to in canon quite frequently that gave me the idea, neither the comics nor much of anything really explained satisfactorily why he needed it.
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Personally, my head canon is that the enslavement of the Crystal Ponies wasn't to build or create anything: it was just to create so much negative emotional energy that the Crystal Heart would become permanently corrupted.
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> a more readable definition of Russel's paradox
How about this?
R = { S | S ∉ S }
R ∈ R?
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That works too, but isn't appreciably different from "Let R = { x | x ∉ x }, then R ∈ R ⟺ R ∉ R... or is it?" that I have in my profile, which is what this conversation was a reference to, if my memory serves me right. :)
Ah, fun with heavy nuclei. Though now I'm wondering if pitchblende grows better than uraninite...
In any case, this looks like it's going to be a lot of fun to read. Looking forward to more.
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Well, I do have a couple of outlines waiting for when inspiration strikes. :) The next one will probably involve Flim, Flam, and a certain clock...
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But have you ever wondered, why does Vinyl's music always involve, well, vinyl, but everything else is always live? ;)
For that matter, when was the last time you listened to a live cello? :)
Showing what crazy things ponies can do with what they have? You, sir, are a man after my own heart. Have an internet cookie!
Nah, I know that pony. He invented the Spirograph.
7125788 The last time I listened to a live cello was today. And then I went home and turned on Pandora.
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It might be that you understand ponies better than most. :) I lived next door to a world class cello player for over two decades and heard her play exactly once.
I'd be more worried about ponies discovering fusion before trouble with fission. All those sun-related cutie marks and little ambitious equines who had spells to manipulate the solar body before Celestia even came along...
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Their sun is far too tiny to involve fusion, so nah. :)
*raises hand*
*lowers hand*
well, good. If anyone can fetch her, it's Pinkie Pie. She's faster than RD, after all, and can appear near any who swear to her domain.
An apt invocation of one of the more horrific manifestations of the bombings.
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…?
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Those RATS.
Just read this chapter. Really interesting. Never noticed that pony in the crowd there, although, I think the ponies should be safe. It's not like he has this for a cutie mark...
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Coat_of_Arms_of_Zheleznogorsk.svg
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Incidentally, he also appears much earlier – in Equestria Games, he asks Spike for an autograph.
Was mostly here to see Sombra going nuclear, since it was mentioned in Aporia's comments.
...That was certainly something.
Before the modern understanding of orbitals it was believed that each orbit can hold several electrons. Up to 2 on the 1st, up to 2 on the 2nd, up to 6 on the 3rd. Three orbits would then mean anything from boron to neon.
I thought you were indicating the mustachioed pony for a few seconds too long there.