Need help with a flat earth

[Svrtnsse]

The sun and the moon is the same thing. Half if it is the sun and it shines light. The other half is the moon and it radiates darkness. It spins round and round and that's how days and nights happen.

Also...
How does the horizon work if the world is infinite and flat? Will it still be a distinct line or will it just be a thin blur off in the distans - when it's not blocked by trees or mountains etc. I guess this would mainly be an issue when you're at high altitudes - like when there's nothing blocking your view as far as the eye can see.

[mbartelsm]

If you still want it to be infinite, you could try a bunch of suns scattered trough the surface, these would turn on and off (maybe only half glows and they rotate?) to produce day and night and would come closer and farther in an oscillating fashion to produce seasons and climate.

Or as someone mentioned, they could set trough a hole on the surface to produce night and then come out in the morning, this would make some damn impressive landscapes at night with an immense beam of light coming out of the ground

[Sheilawisz]

Alphabet, the main universe of my first Fantasy series is composed by an endless ocean, I have other similar universes in my stories and the world of Fantastica (from The Neverending Story) is the same too, a flat world that extends endlessly in every direction.

So, you are not alone =)

About the problem of the day/night cycles and the seasons: The worlds in my endless ocean are continent-size islands. They have a magnetic field and a set of little moons that travel in circles at a huge elevation and around the islands. There is also a tiny sun-like thing for every island, which orbits like the moons and follows a cycle of light and darkness.

The island-worlds have day and night, but if you leave a world and venture far into the ocean, you just find a freezing, eternal night...

I hope that helps you =)

[psychotick]

Hi,

The Horizon would still be a straight horizontal line somewhere in the distance, but you would likely be unable to make out any details of it because of the infinite distance.

And Steerpike raises a good point about the sun. On the plane directly underneath it it would look like a sun, but as you moved away from that point, heading in any direction, the sun would become smaller and smaller because the distance increases. Go to your house with a tape measure, stick one end on a light fitting, and let it drop directly to the floor. This is the closest distance to it. Now walk north, south east or west, and watch as the tape measure grows longer. So either you have one sun and an infinite world where only a small circle of it is lit surrounded by ever decreasing circles of less light and colder temperatures, or you have multiple suns. And if you have multiple suns, they have to be in orbit around each other.

But gravity is a bastard as well. Consider the Earth and the sun. The gravitational attraction between them is balanced by the centripetal force pushing them apart as the Earth spins around the sun. But you cannot have anything orbit an infinite plane. Because there is no orbit large enough for the sun to go around the plane. Draw a one inch line on a piece of paper and then a circle around it. It works. Now make the line two inches and see how much bigger the circle around it has to be. Now extend that line to infinity. So if the sun can't orbit the flat world, then only one force is in effect, gravity. Sooner or later the sun must crash into the flat world.

You could theoretically get around this problem by spinning the flat world so that the sun is in sink with the rotations, i.e. always perfectly above the dead centre of the flat world and in effect spinning around it. But then you have the problem that you can't spin an infinitely long object. The force that pulls the string apart as you spin a ball on a string around your head grows ever larger as the distance from the point of spin increases. Put a tennis ball on a string and twirl it around your head at a constant rate of spin. As you let the string out further, the force with which it pulls at your arm, grows, and sooner or later the string or your arm breaks.

Infinite flat worlds even if they were possible, could not move.

Cheers, Greg.

[Svrtnsse]

I don't think the way the sun becomes smaller is that much of an issue for most practical purposes. You'd have to travel very far in order for this to be noticable to the bare eye.

Climate may be an issue though. The lands just beneath the sun may be warm, even too warm (seas of boiling lava) and the further away you get the colder it will get. It probably won't be colder over the same distance it gets colder on earth. If I understand things correctly the reason the poles are colder than the equator is that they're not facing the sun at the same angle. If that's the case then with a flat world you'd have to go very far indeed in order to reach arctic climates.

[ALB2012]

You could check Terry pratchett. His Discworld is well, a disc, carried on 4 elephants on the back of a turtle.

The disk spins, like a spinning top (I think) and the directions are "Rimwards"- out towards the edge, and "Hubwards"- towards the middle where lies the BIG mountain where the god's live. There is a sea that goes around the edge and pours over with a fence around to stop fishermen falling off.

I think the sun and moon circle it.

I think infinate is a bad idea. If you have a sun and moon it cant be surely. If you are standing on the world it probably seems almost infinite.

Seasons- could be landscape related or closer to the edge is cooler or whatever. Mountains are still mountains. It would not be completely flat, there would always be some terrain in the way.

Does it need seasons- some places have 2 rainy season and the dry season, as opposed to the 4 in the temperate zone.
Or even darkness for a while when the sun is underneath.

The orbit of the sun does not have to be circular, could be eliptical or even spiralling or something.

I think infinite will open can of worms. of course you could just have "because it is", "god did it", "magic did it" or no one knows.
"Well yes I know it is impossible but it is indeed so. Cool eh?"

[Anders Ämting]

In the story I'm writing, the earth is a large flat mass. There is no edge to earth, so it is infinite in size. Above the earth is of course our normal atmosphere the same distance up and then space, which works vastly different in my world, which is where I come upon some problems.

I know that all of this is completely impossible scientifically. I'm not too concerned with being scientifically correct, however I do want to be able to give an explanation for how some things work in my universe.

The things I need help with are the following:

• The Sun/Moon System - How does the sun and moon work in this universe?
• Seasons - How do seasons work in this universe?
• Different Climate Systems - The story is set in the modern day USA where they discover other civilizations living beyond the current known world. How do I work with climate systems?

I'm really having trouble thinking up explanations to give for these problems that aren't just hand waving. Can anyone help me out?

Hm, interesting. My take on this:

Since the world is flat and infinite, it's going to need multiple suns and multiple moons. The moons are enormous in size and rotate slowly around the suns. When the moon obscures the sun, it causes night in the geographical area directly beneath it. (Possibly each sun has multiple moons allowing there to be night in different time zones under the same sun. There may also be "dark" moons that causes night and "bright" moons that reflects sunlight the way normal moons do.) During night time, you would be able to make out other suns in the distance, resembling very large and bright stars.

The suns themselves would move around on the sky, probably in circular patterns, causing seasons as the amount of sunlight in a given area would change. When two or more suns come close to each other it causes summer, and there may even be deserts where a lot of sunlight overlaps. Likewise, there would be "twilight" areas that are perpetually cold due to lack of nearby suns.

That's just off the top of my head, though. Could probably need some refinement.

[ThinkerX]

ANother thought here:

Take a steal from Niven's 'Ringworld' (which even came with a 1:1 'map' of earth.

Much, much simpler all the way around, plus scientifically phausible.

[Anders Ämting]

ANother thought here:

Take a steal from Niven's 'Ringworld' (which even came with a 1:1 'map' of earth.

Much, much simpler all the way around, plus scientifically phausible.

Wait, so instead of a concept I've never even heard of anyone attempting before, your suggestion is to go with something that's been done several times already? Why?

Why does it have to be scientifically possible? Alphabet is clearly not writing hard science fiction here, and this is a forum for fantasy writers. I mean, if it was just a question of creating a world that's easy to make sense of, why would this person go for such a blatantly reality-defying cosmology? Clearly that's what this story is about. The whole selling point, if you will.

[ThinkerX]

Wait, so instead of a concept I've never even heard of anyone attempting before, your suggestion is to go with something that's been done several times already? Why?

Why does it have to be scientifically possible? Alphabet is clearly not writing hard science fiction here, and this is a forum for fantasy writers. I mean, if it was just a question of creating a world that's easy to make sense of, why would this person go for such a blatantly reality-defying cosmology? Clearly that's what this story is about. The whole selling point, if you will.

Depends on if the emphasis is the story or the setting.

If its the story, then a 'ringworld' type setting solves pretty much all of his problems.

If its the setting, then there are a lot of complex problems he has to address somehow.