The World is Round?

I will take the following pages to relay, for future generations, some of the theories regarding the nature of this world. As many multi-dimensional travellers have noticed, time in Palladium seems to travel at a rate inconsistent with gravitational force, or I should say, if the world we live on is as big as the passage of the sun would suggest, then the force of gravity should be significantly higher than it is.

Well, let’s start from some points of reference. I’ll use Earth, as that is the fabled birthplace of the Gods of Light. Except, of course, for Thoth, since knowledge of his origins are of course known to us all.

Earth is a planet of gravity equivalent to our own, with a day/night cycle of approximately the same length. It is twenty-four thousand nine hundred one(24,901) miles in circumference with an average diameter of seven thousand nine hundred seventeen(7917) miles.

At the equator (the point halfway between the poles) a day has about 12 hours of ‘daylight’ and 12 hours of darkness, for a total of 24 hours per day.

This would mean, that every thousand miles of distance you travel around the globe, if done instantly like through a teleport, would change the local time by about an hour. In actuality, the distance, at the equator, is just over a thousand miles, and it becomes progressively less as you move toward the pole. At the 59th parallel north, the distance between hours is just above 500 miles.

If you were to travel a distance of, say, three thousand miles at the 59th parallel, you would travel through a period of six hours, or the equivalent of moving from dawn to noon.

What, if anything, does this have to do with Palladium?

The known world is approximately twenty-nine hundred miles across. Based on the variations between temperatures in the climates of the known world, that would put us, approximately, between the 24th parallel in the south and the 59th parallel in the north.

I know, that assumes a 23.5° axial tilt, which is observably false given observation of the sun’s position as the seasons change, but humor me, for at least a moment.

So, if, as assumed, the northmost climes of the world are at the 59th parallel, then travel by teleportation would see significant changes in time from that far north, while, as we know, there is no significant change from any two points in the known world.

This, then, requires a world that is almost seventy thousand miles in diameter at the northern edge of the palladium continent. At a minimum. If the top edge were still at the 59th parallel, we would be on a world that is close to one hundred forty thousand miles in diameter. This would make it as large as the so called gas-giants that inhabit the solar system where earth resides.

But, there we have to consider the axial tilt of the planet in our considerations. Tracking the zenith point of the sun over the course of a year gives us a total difference of 82°, giving us an axial tilt of 41°.

Since byzantium never fully falls into darkness, meaning that it is not above a supposed Arctic Circle, as they have on earth above the 66th parallel, we know that Byzantium is not farther than 49° north of the equator.

Those of a nautical background at this point are suggesting that I am a bit slow. As we know from observations using a Sextant, northern tip of the continent is at the 44th parallel north of the equator, and byzantium is less than a degree further north than that. We also know that the southern tip of the continent is just short of the 38th parallel north.

That would mean that our world is the same seventy thousand miles in diameter at the northernmost point of the palladium continent, but, since it is now at the 44th parallel instead of the 59th, the diameter at the equator is now only around a hundred thousand miles in diameter.

This still puts it in Gas-Giant range, but it is now closer to Saturn as opposed to Jupiter. Or, in another perspective, it is close to 9 times the diameter of earth.

So, the individuals stating that our world is mostly hollow would have to be correct, since we are not smashed flat by the gravity of a planet on a parity with the density of earth.

Grignak’s Note: I do not fully understand all the terms here, but I thought it interesting. I’d never considered that we might live on a sphere before, but it is an interesting idea, if not completely ludicrous. Everyone knows that the world is flat…don’t they? This was as much as I understood, even if in a limited manner. The rest of the section delved into something called ‘physics’ which I don’t understand really at all. The math is clear, but the concepts are too strange for me.

First image by Mukumbura as shared on Flickr
Second image by Dawn 2069.
Third image, with editing for use, from Universe Today