Jay's Pernese Science!

[Jay Kitten]

While this is an art thread, science is arguably an art, and so I decided I wanted to talk about Pern and all of it's celestial happenings, since this discussion has pervaded the C-box before. And so, since I am a physics student, who better to talk about this topic than I?!

LET'S BEGIN!

*cracks brain knuckles*

First off I'd like to bring to attention that there are actually FIVE planets in the Rukbat system. That isn't many. Also, the REAL LIFE Rukbat is a Class B (blue) star, while the one in the books is a yellow dwarf, similar to our sun.

One of them is our Pern, with it's two moons and dragons, and three continents. (the place most people live, the Northern continent, Southern, and Far Western continents)

The Rukbat system from the books also has TWO asteroid belts and an Oort cloud. It's from this cloud that the infamous Red Star comes, it is a Sedna-class Oort object. Most people don't know about Sedna, but Sedna is actually a "dwarf planet" that orbits about 3-32 times further from the sun than Neptune. This would mean that the Red Star is a dwarf planet, and it spawns Thread for unknown reasons.

Wouldn't it be fantastic to find out that Sedna has life on it like that? Right now it's probably not possible, but if it was it would be an amazing thing.

Now there begs the question of the two asteroid belts. Many people don't know that our own Earth gets impacted by small objects all the time. In fact, about 500 meteoroids hit Earth's surface every year. We only have one asteroid belt, so what would that mean for Pern? Well, if asteroids work like my homework, then twice as much. What would that be like? Not only Thread but asteroids too? Jeez, man, I wouldn't want to be Pern.

[Kaya]

The Red Star doesn't actually "spawn" Thread, but rather drags the spores that contain Thread (I always imagined them like capsules) from the Oort Cloud towards Pern's atmosphere. The reason why they cause such bad burns in addition to just being plain nasty is attributed to the fact that they just fell through the atmosphere. =/

So honestly, I'd never want to live on canon Pern. Thread, meteors, tunnelsnakes and no proper heating, cooling, sanitation or healthcare. ...pass.

[Kaya]

Bio nerd alert. We learned about mycorrhizae in Plant Bio this year. I also drew a dragon from the Moreta book on these notes. That is all.

Thread is based on mycorrhizae (my-core-eye-zee), a type of fungus growth.

Ectomycorrhizae (no that scary a word, promise) is a type of fungus that grows AROUND plant roots and usually is beneficial.

Arbuscular mycorrhizae invades plant roots and is parasitic toward the plant. Thread is based on this type of mycorrhizae.

I always assumed that atmospheric entry was a type of necessary scarification to destroy the capsule around the Thread spores and release them into the atmosphere.

[Jay Kitten]

I thought Thread burned organic material because of a chemical reaction it caused by touching it and since they were spores that was how it "fed" to remain alive. But really, atmospheric entry and vacuum but not dragon fire? C'mon, really?! Lol.

Also, as far as oort clouds go, they have tons of stuff that can be used to create life. Some might even have bacteria floating around, they are the most resilient forms of life known to man. But these aren't just bacteria, ya know?

[Kaya]

Also, it also seemed super whimy that Nitric acid could kill Thread. I mean, what molarity of HNO3 ? And, well, a medieval society just having barrels of concentrated acid lying around....really?

[Kaya]

I also assumed that Thread was in a state of suspended life, as some reproductive structures can be (like seeds...). And then when they were scarified by the atmosphere the inner capsule finally dumped it's contents into the air.

[Jay Kitten]

I believe that that many Turns and not only that but the period in which Thread wasn't around would be more than enough to regain some of the technology that we made on Earth ourselves. Then again, they did show instances of ingenuity, however they used candles for clocks. I mean I would think that a mechanical clock wouldn't be that hard to make in the smith Hall if they can make chemical flamethrowers.

And on top of that, why would Records of Threadfall before the Long Interval vanish randomly like they did? I mean, I'm pretty damn sure Thread is important enough to keep records about, haha. Considering we know about stuff that was around in ancient Egypt?

[Kaya]

I was always of the opinion that the record of Thread remained but that common people refused to believe that it was real.

Also the several different nasty plagues.

Also, firestone is a precious commodity that is life giving to Pern. Using it for anything other than defense is "wasteful", most likely.

I was reading about instrument making on Pern (thanks Jay, ) and it seemed to me that they had a lot more instruments than I thought. I talked about metal instruments even, which seemed incredulous considering how "limited" metal is on Pern.

[Simile]

There are reasons why I am not talking about this. One being that this is not my strong suit... But, it is interesting to read.

[Kaya]

Quick reply, 'cause I wanna get to my RP post, but I was thinking this:

Dragons are kind of a hive-esque species (not to bring up thoughts of DeathWing Hives). Mentally/socially/etc-linked creatures tend to have a "Big momma lays all the eggs" figure in charge. I guess that's where I always thought it came from, especially when Lessa was given all that crap about Queens not really flying. Because those hive queens usually do just sit and lay eggs all day.

[Kaya]

Well, dragons were engineered. Firelizards were the native state and their job wasn't to fight Thread. They could just avoid it by -betweening-. Plus they survived better in groups ("fairs") like lion prides or elephant herds. So their communal nature makes sense. They were probably never very territorial except maybe for nesting spots, so then it makes sense that the biggest ones need to be the mommas since the sires might not still be hanging around or because females "hide" their eggs at first? hm

[Jay Kitten]

This is of course, a very strange discussion, as comparing a dragon to anything we know would be akin to comparing gasoline to water, on a molecular level. Compounds change completely just by adding one small difference.

That being said, I think that it stands to show that dragons actually are more similar to insects in behavior than anything, considering they lay eggs and have Queens. Insects are the only species on the Earth that we know who have that sort of hierarchy. Ants are a pretty good example, not only are there Queens but also soldiers and workers. (or in this case bronzes and greens). So it stands to reason that their congregating in Weyrs and clutching via one source of all the eggs is a distinct insect genetic factor. It's probably that dragons are a massive genetic melting pot of thousands of creature's DNA, considering in order to get something like that you would need tons of small bits of DNA structures, which would have to come from somewhere. Although Anne didn't know much about genetics when she said they were based on fire-lizards, considering dragons are the same as the smaller things, just bigger. Chickens have a DNA strand that is inert that, if active, would cause them to grow as large as dinosaurs. It would be a simple transition. Now if they were coded from scratch, that's something different, and would need many samples.

[Kaya]

Well, I'm pretty sure they were adapted from the firelizards. The people in the story seemed to come from a four-limbs creature world, not six. Everything they brought was had four limbs except insects. So they'd need to use the firelizard structure as a physical template if nothing else because if they didn't I don't see how they'd get another six limbed creature.

The perhaps drastic change in social behavior was engineered to include humans. So instead of baby flitts that imprint like ducklings on their parents in the existing fair, they Impress to humans. Flitts don't quite act the same as the original flitts found on Pern because they did make some genetically modified flitts too and I think they out competed the other, native kind.

[sweetlilangel]

Um.. To the discussion the first page.. It is actually explained int he last two books of Jaxom's time line by AVAIS... While that isn't relevant to RMW itself, it is to the discussion since that seems to be about the books in general and not just RMW.

[Kaya]

Which discussion, Lil? Thread surviving in space? Acid killing Thread?